In early 2002, when Americans still were reeling over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and worries abounded over U.S. border security, a port inspector from Southern Arizona cast those cares aside and went on the take to make some extra cash.
On a yacht in San Diego, in a meeting with men he thought were members of a Mexican drug cartel, John M. Castillo offered to wave vehicles through the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales in exchange for money.
He later sold the men six immigration documents that could be used by noncitizens to enter the country with the appearance of legal status. A few months after that, he helped them move 66 pounds of cocaine from Nogales, Ariz., to Tucson.
Castillo's total take was $32,000. Now he's off to prison for five years as one of the latest defendants sentenced in an FBI corruption sting that targeted police, military personnel and other local public officials.
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"Seven months after Sept. 11, when border security should have been tighter than ever, he made it into a sieve for anyone with cash in hand," assistant federal prosecutor Michael Ferrara said Thursday at Castillo's sentencing in U.S. District Court in Tucson.
Castillo, 32, was brought into the fake drug ring by his brother, former Army National Guard recruiter Demian F. Castillo, 35, then a sergeant first class at a recruiting office in the Valencia Road armory. The elder Castillo brother has not yet been sentenced.
Castillo the port inspector became more corrupt than his brother, the court heard. Ferrara, the prosecutor, said John M. Castillo was one of the two worst offenders in the Lively Green case.
The other was identified as former Army National Guard recruiter Darius W. Perry, who also was sentenced to five years in prison last week. Perry, 42, ran six loads of cocaine and recruited six other National Guard members to run drugs.
Thursday's hearing helped paint a fuller picture of the lengths the FBI went to — in this case, planting undercover agents on an ocean-going yacht — to catch local officials willing to take payoffs.
John M. Castillo's involvement began in the spring of 2002, when he went to a basketball game with his older brother and another Army National Guard recruiter, former Staff Sgt. Raul F. Portillo, who at the time worked out of the Guard's East Broadway recruiting office.
Both recruiters were by then already working for what they thought was a Mexican cartel, the court heard. They arranged for John M. Castillo to fly to San Diego to meet a man they called "Tío" — the Spanish word for uncle — who posed as the head of the drug ring but actually was an undercover FBI agent.
At the yacht-board meeting, John M. Castillo agreed to look the other way as vehicles he thought were loaded with cocaine crossed from Mexico into the United States. Ten days later, he waved through two "ghost loads" of cocaine.
Over the next year or so, he sold the blank immigration forms to the drug lords, took part in the cocaine run and also recruited another person, a state corrections officer, to get involved.
As part of his sentence, John M. Castillo must repay the $32,000 in bribe money he accepted.
Also sentenced this week was former state prison guard David M. Bustamante, 37. The father of four took part in three drug runs, moving a total 242 pounds of cocaine. He also recruited two other people to join him and took a total of $18,200 in bribes.
Bustamante wept as he apologized in court Friday to his friends, family and former co-workers, "but most of all, my children.
"I'm so ashamed of the bad example I've set for them," said Bustamante, who was sentenced to 3 3/4 years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
All 55 federal court defendants in the Lively Green case faced much higher penalties if charged with drug trafficking.
Instead each was allowed to plead guilty to a single count of bribery for the cash they received. As a result, none will serve more than five years, and many will serve less than one year.
The Justice Department said the plea agreements were appropriate in the circumstance. Legal observers believe the plea bargains are linked to misconduct by FBI informants, who hired prostitutes during a Las Vegas drug run to have sex with men who later became defendants.
