POLICE INFORMANT IN WITNESS PROTECTION

Torstar Network

Jorge Acosta knew his life would change forever once he agreed to
play ball with police and prosecutors by testifying at a high stakes
Mississauga murder trial. Acosta, 31, who is now in the witness
protection program with his family, had been given immunity despite
playing key roles in three contract murders, including the killings
of a father and son who drug investigators believed were linked to a
Colombian drug cartel and a Mexican crime group.

Using his testimony, Peel prosecutors Steve Sherriff and Mike Morris
last week convinced a jury to convict three men of first-degree
murder in the July 26, 2005, slaying of Mississauga's Mauricio
Castro, a major Canadian cocaine dealer.

"I don't think Acosta will ever be able to re-enter his life as it
once was. He's always going to have to be protected by our government
and relocated, probably out of the country," said Peel Const. Sean
Gormley at the Brampton trial's preliminary hearing in April 2007.
"He has no friends here."

Before he was murdered, Castro, a man with a family home in Bolton
and a condo in Mississauga, imported millions of dollars of cocaine
from Colombia through Mexico into Canada and the United States with
his 71-year-old father, Humberto, drug investigators say.

Jurors found Michael Allen, 36, a career criminal from Mississauga
and London, pumped four bullets into Castro, 31, who was in his Ford
Escape outside of a Burger King at Square One Shopping Centre in
Mississauga. Four days after the noon-hour killing, Castro's father
was slain outside of his home in Pereira, Colombia.

The murders were part of a "corporate takeover," Sherriff told the
preliminary hearing.

Jurors decided Jaime Restrepo, 34, the boss of Acosta's former GTA
crime organization, ordered the hit on Castro - his own cousin - and
paid Allen two kilos of cocaine worth more than $50,000 to carry it
out. Zacky Deleon, 34, of Barrie, another drug runner for Restrepo,
delivered the cocaine payment to Allen and was also found guilty.

Throughout the trial, jurors got an insight into international drug
trafficking, a world of betrayal and double cross, a world where
professional killers could be hired in South America and Canada for
two kilos of cocaine.

They never knew U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officers
believed the Castros were linked to the notorious and violent
Medellin Cartel, or the deep security and safety fears surrounding
this trial. Police officers checked everyone entering the courtroom
each day and undercover officers watched over Crown witnesses, most
of whom, unbeknownst to jurors, received some protection.

Castro was considered a main supplier of cocaine in Canada and the
pipeline for the illicit narcotic into New York. The DEA not only had
an active investigation underway into his activities but a grand jury
had been convened. The Castros would have been arrested had they ever
set foot in New York.

After Castro was killed, Peel police found $750,000 in Canadian and
U.S. currency in his Mississauga apartment. They also found four
semi-automatic handguns, an Uzi submachine gun, and money counting machines.

"It was the kind of weaponry not normally found in society," Gormley
told a preliminary hearing.

It was the Crown's case that Restrepo, with ties to Colombia and
Costa Rica, had his cousin murdered to avoid having to repay a $1
million debt that occurred when U.S. Customs seized $2.4 million at
the Detroit/Windsor border on Aug. 18, 2004. The money, from the sale
of 200 kilos of cocaine, was being transported in a truck as part of
a regular drug-money haul from Hamilton to the U.S. and eventually to Colombia.

Restrepo was in charge of the cash, hidden in boxes inside the truck.
He was on the hook for the lost money. Castro had to be repaid.
Payments would be made in installments, cutting into his profits as a
middleman in Castro's organization.

His crew also had about $400,000 of Castro's cocaine hidden in an
apartment near High Park. Restrepo was selling the cocaine despite
strict orders from Castro to wait until the price rose.

Getting rid of the Castros not only ended Restrepo's debt but also
paved the way for him to run his own lucrative cocaine importing and
distribution business as the top dog, not as Castro's middleman,
Sherriff told jurors.

Even though Acosta and his family went into witness protection in
February 2006, he knew he would be "looking over his shoulders" the
rest of his life, Gormley told the preliminary hearing.

Acosta thought Restrepo wanted him dead. In fact, several people
likely wanted him silenced. Not only did he testify against the
accused men, he also helped plan Castro's murder in Canada and the
murder of Castro's father in Colombia.

Acosta also named the hit men he hired in Colombia for $15,000 to
have Humberto Castro murdered, identified as Posillo and El Negro,
apparently men who once served as bodyguards for Fabio Ochoa, a
well-known Colombian drug lord now in a U.S. prison.

He testified at the preliminary hearing via video from an unknown
location because Peel police had credible information that a contract
had been placed to have him killed before he testified, either en
route to the courthouse, or inside.

When someone is arrested and co-operates, it is a major threat to a
cartel, DEA Special Agent Joseph Dill told the preliminary hearing.
He said cartels like to send messages so people "don't talk." The
cartels had blown up planes carrying witnesses to trials, and
kidnapped and killed family members to prevent informants from
testifying against them, Dill said.

Although Acosta insisted Restrepo told him the Castros weren't
connected to "the office" - a.k.a. "the cartel," which is why the hit
men agreed to murder Humberto Castro - the DEA certainly believed
they were part of the notorious Medellin drug organization.

The DEA believed Castro was moving hundreds of kilos of cocaine worth
an estimated $2 million each month to Canada and New York via
Colombia and Mexico. The Castros had become the main focus of a major
DEA probe dubbed Project Mojo in February 2005 after 45 kilos of
cocaine, headed for New York, was seized in Missouri.

Humberto Castro, according to the DEA, had once acted as an attorney
for the late Pablo Escobar's infamous cartel.

Restrepo's younger brother Jorge, 31, also testified against his own
brother and the others. He was also given immunity from prosecution
for the murder. He lured Castro to the mall on the promise he was
going to pay some of their debt. Instead of being tried for murder,
he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and received a
nine-year sentence in return for testifying as a Crown witness with
an offer of witness protection when he leaves prison.

Initially a small-time cocaine dealer, Acosta began moving larger
quantities of cocaine as one of several drug runners in Restrepo's
crew. He delivered the drugs in suitcases to buyers waiting at subway
stops after receiving special codes in his pagers.

Growing up in a rough neighbourhood in Medellin, Acosta said murder
was a way of life where killers and legitimate businessmen lived side-by-side.

"In Colombia, everybody kills for peanuts," he said. "From my
neighbourhood, some of them became lawyers, some engineers, some are
just working men. Some are murderers. Some stick up banks, deal drugs .."

Using a childhood friend known only as Richard, he located the hit
men for Humberto Castro's murder. Each was paid $15,000. Richard got
a Renault 19 and $4,000 as a finder's fee. He never paid Richard up front.

"He knows me from the neighbourhood so if I don't pay, they'll just
kill me and my whole family," he said.

Nobody connected with this trial is being prosecuted for any of the
murders in Colombia.