Back in the 1980s, Miami lawyer Manuel Lopez-Castro was convicted of racketeering charges for helping a marijuana ring flush with cash buy a majority interest in Sunshine State Bank during the heyday of drug trafficking and money laundering in South Florida.
But rather than surrender to start his 27-year prison sentence in early 1986, Lopez-Castro fled to Mexico and eventually dropped the “Castro” in his last name when he obtained a fraudulent Mexican birth certificate, authorities say.
This week, the feds finally caught up with the longtime fugitive.
Mexican police arrested Lopez-Castro, 61, during a traffic stop in Cancun Tuesday, when he jumped out of his vehicle and ran. He didn’t get far. Mexican authorities officially deported Lopez-Castro and turned him over to U.S. Marshals Wednesday for the flight to Miami.
On Thursday afternoon, Lopez-Castro will be in Miami federal court where he was convicted at trial in October 1985.
Lopez-Castro was convicted of helping a marijuana smuggler buy a majority share of the South Miami bank. According to an indictment, the lawyer acted as a Sunshine State official who assisted the bank’s executives, co-defendants Ray and Rafael Corona, in laundering drug profits.
Lopez-Castro failed to show up on Jan. 30, 1986, at a federal prison in Tallahassee. That’s when the lawyer, disbarred after his conviction, was to begin serving his sentence.
Then-U.S. District Judge James W. Kehoe signed a warrant for Lopez-Castro’s arrest. He had been free on bonds totaling $260,000 while he appealed his conviction.
Lopez-Castro’s parents had pledged their home as part of the collateral for the bonds. Castro had surrendered his U.S. passport when the bonds were set. He had been known to travel frequently to Costa Rica and Panama.
Federal agents searched Lopez-Castro’s home at 8100 Old Cutler Rd. for information about his disappearance. The property was valued at $350,000.
At trial, Lopez-Castro’s wife, Paulette, sat through nearly every day of the proceedings. She also vanished, according to a Miami Herald story at the time. The couple had two children, Manuel, 2, and Natalia, 6.
After the lengthy trial, the federal jury convicted Lopez-Castro and one other man, acquitted a third defendant and failed to reach a verdict on the two main defendants charged with helping the marijuana smuggler buy his way into the South Miami bank.
The jury deadlocked in their deliberations of Ray Corona, former board chairman of Sunshine State Bank, and his father, Rafael Corona, the bank’s former managing director. But they were retried in 1986, convicted and sentenced to prison for 20 and 5 years, respectively.
Both Coronas were charged with taking $2 million from Jose Antonio Fernandez, known on the street as La Mentirita or “The Little Liar,” and using the money to buy the Sunshine State Bank in May 1978. Fernandez’s interest in the bank was concealed; on paper, the bank was purchased by the wife of a Panamanian money launderer.
In the first trial, jurors failed to resolve the case against the Coronas because they apparently did not believe the testimony of the government’s star witness, Fernandez. Before trial, he had pleaded guilty to smuggling some 600,000 pounds of marijuana into the United States in 1977-84.
Fernandez told the jury how he filled shopping bags with cash and gave the money to the Coronas to buy Sunshine State Bank, and then asked them to conceal his ownership of it.
The Coronas agreed, Fernandez said, in exchange for stock and their being named officers of the bank.
Prosecutors marshaled volumes of evidence and carefully explained to the jury how the Coronas negotiated with Fernandez, paid for the bank with drug profits, then celebrated with champagne when the bank purchase was approved by regulators.
But Ray Corona, 37, and Rafael Corona, 64, who testified in their defense, told jurors that they were duped by Fernandez.
Fernandez was sentenced to 50 years in prison on narcotics charges, but later had his sentence reduced based on his cooperation with prosecutors.
The jury convicted Lopez-Castro and Gerardo Jorge Guevara, 42. Both assisted with Fernandez’s ownership of Sunshine State Bank, the jury found. The jury convicted them of numerous racketeering and fraud charges.
The jury acquitted William Vaughn, 64, who directed a company described as a “front” by government investigators, who said it was used to launder Fernandez’s drug profits.
