A South Florida man convicted in a Ponzi-style scheme was arrested again after authorities said he defrauded another victim while he was out on bond nearly five years ago, records showed.<\/p>\n
Damian Castilla, 52, of Pembroke Pines, was arrested Wednesday on charges of second-degree grand theft and organized fraud, Miami-Dade jail records showed.<\/p>\n
According to an arrest report, Castilla had been arrested back on March 18, 2020 for operating the scheme that defrauded a victim out of over $300,000.<\/p>\n
Castilla had falsely represented himself as a commodities broker and accepted the funds for investment purposes but spent money on himself, the report said.<\/p>\n
He was released on bond the day after his arrest and while awaiting trial, continued to deceive another victim, the report said.<\/p>\n
On June 7, 2021, he deposited a check from the second victim into his bank account, the report said.<\/p>\n
Castilla was released from prison on November 18, 2025, and is on probation until November 2045 from the previous case, the report said.<\/p>\n
During his appearance in bond court Thursday, Castilla’s attorney said the new arrest was unexpected and questioned why the case wasn’t brought five years ago.<\/p>\n
“He’s done his time, he’s on probation, so we’re hoping to work out this case,” the attorney said.<\/p>\n
A judge set Castilla’s bond at $5,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A South Florida man convicted in a Ponzi-style scheme was arrested again after authorities said he defrauded another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,373],"class_list":["post-252676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-miami-dade-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}