The never-ending scams of Pedro Castillo

From being recognized in Margarita Island as the heir of the picturesque “Ranchos de Chana” (Chana’s slums) he has come to raise a different reputation outside Venezuela. In Miami, Florida, land of the Cuban exile and more recently of the Venezuelan exile, Pedro José Castillo Uzcátegui presents himself as a visionary business man, although in practice he has become a professional scammer.
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An arrest warrant issued by Interpol in 2011 didn’t stop him. Neither did the various law suits he should have faced back in Venezuela. Pedro José Castillo Uzcátegui changed countries but not trades, and he’s being applying a technique with which he has being able to fool known and unknown people, recognized professionals from the Cuban community in Miami and Venezuelan talents that, running from their country’s crisis, have come to the United States for a fresh start.
His name
in Venezuela could be just another citizen’s name until you clear out his
descent. He is the son of Chana Uzcátegui, creator of the recognized “Ranchos de
Chana”
in
Margarita Island in the East part
of the
country. He is alongside with his siblings Triana and José, the legal
representative of the Promotora Chana company, and the heir of a well-known
touristic project as colorful as it is expensive, full of the luxuries that
various figures from chavismo could afford with their dollars and ignoring an
exchange control system established in 2003 and that still stands today.
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Being the son of Chana was his big presentation card in Miami, Florida from his start as a business man in this city: those who knew the mother trusted the son. That way he won over some people but not all of them because Pedro Castillo has come to climb his way up in his business not just because he is “the son of...”. His cleverness, slyness and good verbal skills would be his real weapons to get in top with the best, undertake various projects and gain his fame. A fame wanted by few.
“We all
believe his trade is to scam, or rather, to be a scammer”, says Arnaldo
Limanski, a Venezuelan producer.
They’re
not tales. A law suit introduced in the court of Miami Dade (case M13-40403)
confirms one of the stories that goes up to more than 45 people conned in five
projects, all of them communication media: three digital signal television
stations, a magazine and a radio station.
And the
Interpol order that was still active until May 2017 speaks out about his past in
Venezuela and his relations with chavismo.
A repeated and improved tactic
In February 2015, when the Cuban community took on the task of denouncing via printed and digital media the scams Pedro Castillo Uzcátegui had done to them (some he didn’t pay, some he borrowed money from that he didn’t return later) none of them knew of the previous mischief of this Venezuelan.
At this
time, he had already been processed in Miami Dade Court for a minor offense,
writing checks with insufficient funds, and he was conditionally released under
the commitment to pay $10.000 to the
complainant
Raúl Rodríguez,
$750 minimum per month. All this is explained with detail on
his case file (M13-40403) registered on September 17th 2013, file
that was judicially active on August 2016 because the debt had not been paid
yet.
None of
this was of the knowledge of those who decided to join Castillo Uzcátegui on
that project he decided to start at the end of 2014, the Internet radio station
Mia 1450 AM.
Its
transmissions went on air on December 2014 and in February 2015 the complaints
started to receive coverage on paper and radio. Journalists, announcers,
designers, administrative staff and other professionals, nearly all of them from
Cuban origins, took on the task of exposing their cases and find out who else
had been cheated by this Venezuelan residing in Miami under, in his own words,
an investor’s visa.
None of
the workers, around 25 people, could collect their wages, not even the ones that
started working since October, denounced at that time Nelson Rubio, one of the
journalists Castillo Uzcátegui owed $8.000 from his salary as the conductor of
one of the shows. Contacted two years later he assures that these complaints led
to nowhere because even today the man has not paid any of
them.
Roberto
Ariel confirms it. This Cuban journalist was hired by the Venezuelan to make a
news web page for the radio station. He worked with him for 45 days and left,
not only because he was not paid but because he was blatantly deceived. “A lot
worse” he assures.
Two were
the excuses given by Castillo Uzcátegui to the station staff to justify the late
payments, one was that he had a check for $3.000.000 made out to him that he had
not been able to deposit. He even showed it as a proof that he could pay. “But
it was fake”, assures Ariel. The other excuse concerned his bank accounts which
were frozen as a result of the divorce application he was facing at the
moment.
This was
the excuse he gave to Ariel. He had verbally committed himself to pay him $2.000
as a monthly salary, promising to raise it up to $3.000 or $4.000 if business
went well.
Within 15
days of work in the radio station he asked for the payment. Castillo Uzcátegui
told him he would give him the money at the end of the month stating that was
the reached agreement. It didn’t happen. He insisted and the man wanted to make
a deal. Roberto Ariel remembers the scene and the dialogues:
“He told
me he had some jewelry he would pawn so he could pay me a part but not the whole
amount. He asked me how much money did I need, I told him at least the rent
money which were $550 and he told me ?OK, let’s trade the
jewels’.
When they
were going out to the pawnshop, Castillo Uzcátegui asked him to wait in the
station for an acquaintance that would bring a package, meanwhile he would look
for the jewels at his house and they would meet at the shop door at the agreed
time. Ariel trusted his word.
“When I
arrived, he was nowhere to be seen. He never showed up, never stood up to me. I
complained to him, he banned me from entering the station, I waited for him at
the door every day and in the end I left. He never answered. That is Pedro
Castillo”, says in his heavy Cuban accent and with a tone of indignation as if
the offense had just occurred.
All those
who didn’t collect their salary decided to join and hire a famous Cuban lawyer
to sue. They didn’t achieve anything. For the case to prosper, Castillo
Uzcátegui had to have some property on his name so that the lawyer of the
victims could take the amount of the debt from there and distribute it, but they
couldn’t find anything. The lawyer dismissed them. They contacted another one
with the same result. Without a property, they couldn’t win the case, so none of
them wanted to take on that lost cause.
Although
they couldn’t recover their money, the investigation made by this Cubans leaded
them to find indications that the Venezuelan was no novice on these matters.
Years back something of the sort had occurred to various Venezuelans
linked
to the
media, that had started to migrate
to
Miami. Castillo Uzcátegui had use
the same pattern and improved his technique, especially after that one lawsuit
that could prosper for issuing bad checks.
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First steps in Miami
RH
Noticias was one of the first digital television channels that this Venezuelan,
born in Maracay, Aragua state in 1967, wanted to put on the air. It was
registered with that same name on August 2011 and it remained active until
September 2012 according to legal registers, although the staff didn’t complete
a year of work.
“This
lasted almost three months, until none of us could stand not receiving the
accorded fees. Nobody could get their wages”, says Arnaldo
Limanski.
On this
project Castillo Uzcátegui applied his cunning. He wanted to form a TV channel
exclusively for information so he contacted two renowned professionals to drive
it forward: Eduardo Sapene, who had been vice president of information on RCTV
(one of the main open television channels in Venezuela until it went off air on
May 2007 after Hugo Chávez refused to renew its concession) and Arnaldo
Limanski, a movies and soup operas producer in Venezuela and Latin America. With
both names to his credit he started the quest for talents.
The
host
María
Alejandra Requena remembers she didn’t know Castillo Uzcátegui but she did know
Sapene, and it was because of him, because of his trajectory on RCTV and for
having worked on the same channel, that she decided to listen to the
proposition. They began negotiations through her manager and finally there was
no agreement. “Thanks God it didn’t happen” she says now.
From the
only time she spoke to Castillo, a brief encounter where they only talked about
the project, she was left with the impression that the man was a little arrogant
but that he had a clear view of what he wanted to do and
how.
Limanski
accepted working with him because of the invitation from quite
“eminent”
Venezuelan
journalists. “If they were there, it must be good”, he says, but he also
acknowledges that his own name was used to get a good staff, because if he was
in, good projects could be expected. Limanski was the producer of all of Román
Chalbaud’s movies, except “El Pez que Fuma”, he worked on RCTV producing soap
operas, he was production manager on Venevisión and Vice President of Telemundo
in Miami.
His work
in RH Noticias would be mounting the channel and the production of the programs
in the two studios
rented
for that end. Castillo Uzcátegui ended up owing him $30.000 after three months
of work. On this time, he delayed the payments and when he finally delivered all
the checks at the same time, they all bounced. The checks had no funds.
“I was
one of those who took most of the damage, I remember Sapene didn’t last more
than 15 days”, Limanski points out. Contacted via email, Sapene chose to stand
aside: “My working relationship with Mr. Castillo was very brief and it occurred
almost six years ago, so I don’t wish to speak more of that subject”, he
answered.
After
various months on production, changes on stage, contact with international news
agencies and apparent investments on technology, the channel didn’t go on air in
digital. “It was a lot of money. A month passed, another more and he didn’t pay.
Besides we started to notice that he was delaying everything. Those of us who
could endure it for a while would, but it came a moment when we asked ourselves
“what’s going on here?”, adds Limanski.
More communication media
That
would not be the last work team asking themselves the same question without
understanding the situation, because Castillo Uzcátegui is persistent. Or maybe,
as an old family friend describes him, “he loves to get into
trouble”.
After RH
Noticias, where this “businessman” appeared in the registers as President, his
name stopped showing in the directive board of his new businesses. The second TV
channel would be called Democracia TV and then it would change its name to DTV
Mundo. Castillo Uzcátegui was in charge for a while, then it changed owners and
closed on October 2014.
“He
changed its name because of the bad name he got for not paying people”, assures
another one of the scammed Venezuelans that even became his associate. He asks
to remain anonymous.
The
Venezuelan professionals, most of them journalists, who decided to migrate or
ask asylum in Miami were again the target, and as a good “snake charmer” as his
ex-associate describes him, Castillo Uzcátegui was convincing. He did it with RH
Noticias and then again with Mia 1450 AM.
On this occasion, he took advantage of the Venezuelan context, he said he had some Cuban partners with digital TV equipment, said that they could create media so they would defeat the censorship that was getting worse in Venezuela after the sale of the Globovisión TV channel made on May 2013, that they would install a correspondent station in Caracas and they would have opinion programs with the polemic hosts that had ran away from the South American country.
Yolanda
Medina, Venezuelan journalist that was the producer of Napoleón Bravo’s program
on this adventure, tells that along him and the internationalist Vilma Petrash,
they denounced the nonfulfillment of the payments on court but didn’t achieve
anything.
“It was
such a problem for them to pay, he still owes me $1.000”, says Medina. A low
amount. He owned a presenter $4.500 and to the workers in the correspondent
station installed in Caracas, for which Castillo Uzcátegui bought
recording
equipment, the debt goes up to $120.000, tell those who made business with him
and that, equal to their Miami resident colleagues, ask not to be
named.
“What
Castillo offered sounded like a good idea so many of us decided to take the
risk. Half way we started getting comments from friends and even family members
of Pedro himself called to warned us about making business with him because he
didn’t pay. One of us made the remark to him and he said those were envious
people, that it wasn’t true. After
that the workers started complaining that they weren’t getting paid and we
didn’t understand what was going on because Pedro showed us the checks”, says a
Venezuelan journalist. They had no funds.
On those
days of Democracia TV, Castillo Uzcátegui meets the Venezuelan that would accept
to become his partner, a young man who had various TV equipment and some money
support with which he was planning to publish an equestrian magazine. He knew
again how to aim at his target.
The
partner invested near $60.000 between the channel and the magazine, and although
Castillo Uzcátegui also invested some amount, the project started to crumble as
the payments delayed. It ended up falling apart when he started asking the
advertisers of the magazine for money in exchange for publications that never
came to exist.
The
equestrian project and the partnership between both men ended, but the breakup
showed another act of cunning from Castillo Uzcátegui. Without warning or
authorization, he had registered the channel under this associate and other
investor’s names, getting rid of the budget responsibilities. He was in charge
of administration and finances in all of the projects, the advertiser’s checks
should get to his hands and he would deposit them. That’s what was strange about
the lack of payments because it couldn’t be understood what he did with the
money.
The list
of affected Venezuelans isn’t short, there are more than 10 renowned names like
Roland Carreño, alongside with that of other producers, moderators, journalists,
technicians and administrative personnel, but different from the Cubans that
were conned by the same person, the Venezuelans didn’t join to make the swindles
public. Was it shame, pride, the risk of losing their migratory status? Various
factors to consider. The truth is that all these stories allow to construct a
summary of very well thought and convincing actions from a very skillful man.
“Pedro is
a very open guy, agreeable, with a skill to sell ideas, he manages you to
connect with him. He’s also a bit shameless, if he owes you money and you run
into him on the street he will greet you as if nothing happened, and he’s
capable of telling you that you are the one that owes him. He’s the perfect con
man”, says with a laugh another Venezuelan journalist that worked for him in DTV
Mundo.

He learned something on the island
On
February 4th 2011 the name Pedro José Castillo Uzcátegui was added to
the Interpol list of people wanted by the Venezuelan Government. The offenses
for which he was wanted were fraud, usage of public funds and criminal
association.
The
measure was related to the funding that the Promotora Chana C.A company received
on May 2007, being him one of their legal representatives, by the Fund for
Endogenous Development (Fonendógeno), by that moment on dependence of the
Ministry of Communal Economy. A credit of 13 million bolívares was approved for
the “rebuild, endowment and equipment of the Chana Puerto Fermín hotel”, located
in the Antolín del Campo municipality, El Tirano Beach, Margarita Island, one of
the most attractive touristic spots from the East of
Venezuela.
The fact that the Promotora Chana C.A company, registered on 2005, had been benefited by Hugo Chávez’s Government with the construction of a hotel is something that can be explained by the connections Castillo Uzcátegui had made during his years in Margarita.
He got
married with Alexa Navarro, the daughter of Alexis Navarro, the Nueva Esparta
state Governor from 2000 to 2004 and militant of the Movimiento V República
(Fifth Republic Movement) (MVR), Hugo Chávez’s party before the foundation of
the PSUV. He was a candidate to the mayoralty of the Antolín del Campo
municipality in 2004 with Proyecto Venezuela (a small opposition party) but he
lost, he got on third place with 2.064 votes. That year his father in law didn’t
achieve the reelection as Governor but was appointed as Venezuelan Ambassador in
Russia.
His
mother Chana Uzcátegui’s project of expanding the concept of her picturesque
housings to other areas of the Caribbean Island and of the country also got him
contacts. He had found acceptance with the Government in the Ministry of
Tourism. Chana wanted to develop a hotel in Cardón Beach, in Los Roques and in
Coche Island.
It was
also known that Castillo Uzcátegui had relations with Jorge Rodríguez, an
important figure on Chávez’s Government and now of Nicolás Maduro’s. They were
partners, says a person close to the family, one of his associates in
Miami.
A report
issued by the General Accountancy Office of Venezuela on 2011 included this case
on a chapter dedicated to the Fonendógeno. The organization’s version states
that Promotora Chana company got 13,72 million bolívares for the rebuild of the
Chana Puerto Fermín hotel (the old El Tirano hotel), but it infringed the
conditions stated for the credit that included the mortgage of the hotel in
favor of Fonendógeno and the payment of this fund in fixed quotas in an 8-year
period.
Promotora
Chana didn’t fulfill Fonendógeno’s mortgage because it had already signed on
another one with the Banco Industrial de Venezuela (Industrial Bank of
Venezuela), for a loan to remodel this same hotel. But it even fell into another
irregularity by selling the hotel to Seguros Premier insurance company on July
2009, two years after receiving the funding. On 2010 the insurance company
declared bankruptcy.
On this
truss of irregularities where the Accountancy Office couldn’t determine the
whereabouts of the given money, Castillo Uzcátegui sued Seguros Premier for not
paying him: even though the contract of sale was legally registered, the funds
never arrived to his account. The Chana Puerto Fermín hotel was sold in 103
million bolívares, about $16 million at the time. Nowadays it is in the hands of
the State and abandoned.
This case
represents the ending of Castillo Uzcátegui’s business story in Margarita
Island, a story that was already bad from past years. He had been the manager of
a garbage collecting company called Cauvica, registered in 1997 in Nueva Esparta
that gave its services on this entity and on Anzoátegui. On this company, that
was from a family member, he had to face numerous labor lawsuits for not paying
his workers, even though he received funds to pay for these liabilities. The
company closed and he kept owing the personnel.
After
that he tried to break his bad streak as a manager with Promotora Chana,
boosting his mother’s project of expanding the Ranchos de Chana to other areas
and opening hotels in Los Roques Island, Coche Island and Margarita in El Cardón
Beach apart from the El Tirano housing. In fact, on January 2009 he opened the
Chana El Cardón hotel after 18 months of building and 50 million bolívares
invested, a work that started almost at the same time as he received the State
funding to rebuild the El Tirano hotel. There are no few versions that coincide
with the statement that the hotel was constructed with diverted public funds.
And from
the inauguration of the Chana El Cardón hotel, later named as Ikin Margarita,
the luxury party was very well remembered, a party that had the presence of the
Spanish Bertín Osborne, the only one that could charge for his work because he
asked for his payment in advance, assure friends and people who attended the
event.
It was
like this that the plans for expanding the Chana hotels didn’t last. With a
history of lawsuits against him and against the Promotora Chana company that
started to fall strongly since 2010 and that included trials for the charging of
bolívares (Bolívar Banco and Banco Fondo Común), property lien, prohibition from
alienating and encumbering assets, aggravated fraud and breach of contracts,
Castillo Uzcátegui decides to leave Venezuela. He did it before the arrest
warrant against him was issued by Interpol.
“That’s a
lie, they took it against me and I had to come here”, told Castillo Uzcátegui to
one of his associates on DTV Mundo in Miami some years ago, talking about that
warrant that is still active and that almost nobody knew about on each of his
bad tracks.
He has
not been detained, but the charges in his record have been updated: fraudulent
harvest of public funds. Castillo Uzcátegui was contacted by phone to ask him
about his stance and his version of all the accusations against him, from the
frauds to the Interpol warrant, but he only said “no” and hanged up the call.

“Who’s
behind it? Someone must be protecting him, we can’t understand how he hasn’t
been arrested or deported”, states Arnoldo Limanski, and he is not the only
cheated one who asks himself that same question. He is
apparently being protected by the United States Government, for collaborating on
drug trafficking and corruption investigations that involve functionaries from
chavismo, says the journalist Nelson Rubio. On May 2017, the name of Pedro José
Castillo Uzcátegui was excluded from Interpol’s wanted list.
Now,
after staying away from the mass media business, he has appeared on something
new. From a few months back he is been linked with a restaurant called El Jaleo
de la Ocho, Steak House found on Calle 8 in Miami. The Cubans he cheated have
been following his steps. His name does not appear on the enterprise’s register,
not as owner neither as director, but he has been seen daily on the restaurant’s
bar and it was there where he picked up the call that he decided to finish
minutes later. The payments for the personnel are issued with delay.
Pedro
José Castillo Uzcátegui doesn’t stop.