By Michael Hinkelman
The Philadelphia Daily News
PHILADELPHIA — An FBI informant told former Philadelphia Police Inspector Daniel Castro in September that debt collectors were frustrated trying to recover a $90,000 debt Castro was owed by a businessman.
The debt collectors wanted to “rough up” the man, but they needed Castro’s approval, the informant told him.
“I never told my mom this before. I told them, ‘yeah, OK,’” Castro told a jury yesterday. “It was the biggest mistake of my life.”
Castro said that when he returned home after picking his son up from a halfway house on Nov. 5, he pulled into the driveway of his home and found Philadelphia cops and FBI agents waiting “with guns drawn at me.” He was arrested in front of his son.
Castro, 47, was indicted in November on extortion and bribery charges for allegedly trying to shake down a former business partner, Wilson Encarnacion, to whom he had lost $90,000 in 2006 in a failed real-estate deal.
The government’s case against Castro is based on secretly recorded conversations between Castro and the informant, Rony Moshe, who told Castro he knew people who could help him collect on the debt. (Castro never hired any real collectors; an FBI agent posed as the collector.)
During his 90 minutes on the stand yesterday, Castro broke down several times. At other times, he spoke haltingly. Mostly though, Castro - who once had aspirations to be police commissioner - appeared to be a broken man.
During cross-examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis Lappen portrayed the former chief of the Traffic Division as a cop with an ethical blind spot who played by his own set of rules.
“You thought you were above the law?” Lappen asked.
“No, sir,” Castro replied. “This whole thing is a mess. It was the biggest mistake of my life. I acknowledge that.”
“I broke my mom’s heart,” he added. Defense attorney Brian McMonagle has suggested that the feds used Moshe to entrap Castro.
But Lappen mocked the idea that “some common criminal” could walk up to a cop with Castro’s rank and experience and persuade him to do something he was not inclined to do.
“You sent this man [Moshe] after me, sir,” Castro replied.
Moshe testified earlier this week that he had given Castro cash and gifts over the years.
McMonagle has told the jury Moshe is “a liar” who became an informant after he was convicted in federal district court in 1994 of drug dealing and tax evasion and served a year in prison.
But a co-defendant in the case - restaurateur Billy Wong - who has admitted extortion-related offenses and is cooperating with the government, testified yesterday that after he told Castro last year that he had a business partner who wanted help collecting debts, Castro referred the services of the collector to him.
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