The Mystery of Jose “Chille” DeCastro’s latest lawsuit, which started as a defamation suit against fellow YouTuber Dale “Lackluster” Hiller grew deeper on Tuesday as DeCastro made private both his scheduled livestream and produced video dedicated to why he was suing Hiller, Josh “Accountability for All” Abrams and Kate Peter.
DeCastro had originally announced his lawsuit against Hiller two weeks ago, after years of threatening to do so. Hiller had trashed DeCastro’s reputation years ago and there is legitimate bad blood on the part of DeCastro towards Hiller, who currently runs one of the most popular first amendment auditing related channels on YouTube.
While threatening Hiller, reports have indicated that DeCastro has been increasingly frustrated with Hiller’s continued success and such things as Hiller’s Attorney Shield endorsement, a product similar to various products DeCastro has pitched over the years but never carried through producing.
The diminutive YouTuber explained in his announcement of the lawsuit against Hiller that the statute of limitations was running out quickly and that he only had days to file his suit against Hiller before he was up against that limit.
Hiller reportedly made his statements in 2022, during the same summer where the majority of the events from DeCastro’s previous lawsuits against Kate Peter, Josh Abrams, Michael “Blue Bacon” Pierattini and others allegedly occurred.
That year DeCastro had exploded onto the auditing scene and had surpassed Glenn Cerio as the number one talked about person in the first amendment community. There were daily livestreams providing critiques of DeCastro’s latest videos and whole communities formed around the shared goal of making fun of the YouTuber.
DeCastro reacted badly to the new exposure and targeted Kate Peter and the idea that Peter was running a “Masshole Troll Army” to torment him and carry out various misdeeds against him based on her extremely popular Discord server.
Fans would gather on Peter’s Discord server and literally figure out where he was travelling as he livestreamed from the street signs and landmarks visible in his videos and livestreams.
DeCastro was “tracked like a great white shark” not due to any tracking software or nefarious means, but through his own statements, videos and trust of people who then leaked his information.
The YouTuber’s reactions, rage, and alleged fabrication of events to support his further attempts to get protective orders against Peter and Abrams only fueled his growing status as a laughing stock in the first amendment community.
The summer of 2022 ended with the start of a crackdown by DeCastro on coverage of his channel. After multiple failed at stopping Kate Peter’s coverage of him via unsuccessful attempts at protection orders against her and Josh Abrams, he sued both Peter and Abrams in a federal civil rights lawsuit based out of Massachusetts.
He also went on a spree of filing YouTube copyright strikes against channels that used portions of his video productions. He briefly took down channels like Irish Demon and Dogtective with unrelenting use of the copyright system.
Part of YouTube’s copyright rules indicate that the person who filed a strike against another channel for use of their material has a set amount of time to file an actual copyright lawsuit. If the person does not follow through with the lawsuit, the copyright strike is eventually released against the channel.
This did not stop DeCastro from filing hundreds of strikes against creators such as Daniel Jones of the Wales based Welsh News Network as recently as April of 2024, with varying degrees of success as he never actually followed through with an international lawsuit.
For the United States cases, in 2022 he modified his federal civil rights lawsuit against Peter and Abrams and converted it into a copyright abuse lawsuit. He then included Google and dozens of John Doe creators who were never named but could be used to fulfill YouTube’s requirement of a lawsuit being filed within the time limits as a lawsuit existed.
While that lawsuit was eventually dismissed in 2023, DeCastro took his original charges against Kate Peter and added Michael “Blue Bacon” Pierattini, Team Skeptic and super fan Daniel Clement and filed defamation charges against the foursome in California before the statute of limitations ran out in 2023.
That lawsuit has lingered for the past two years and seems to be on the verge of a conclusion as Pierattini, the only active defendant in the lawsuit has filed for terminating sanctions and DeCastro himself recently filed to drop the lawsuit against Pierattini with prejudice as long as Pierattini agreed to his demands.
As that case was apparently coming to a conclusion, DeCastro announced his plans to sue Hiller. Unfortunately for the YouTuber, the statute of limitations to sue for defamation based on Hiller’s 2022 comments in his most recent states of residence, California (one-year limit) and Nevada (two-year limit), has run out.
There are few states where the statute of limitations for defamation runs for three years. Those states include Arkansas, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin. In most states, the filing of those lawsuits in Federal court must be done in person by the individual who is filing the lawsuit.
While there were rumblings and rumors that DeCastro had filed the new civil rights lawsuit last week, no new listings have been found in the PACER Federal lawsuit tracking system. DeCastro had not left California during that time, and the states that he could easily drive to with three-year statutes of limitations was limited to New Mexico.
With the new addition of Kate Peter and Josh Abrams to the lawsuit, it appears he is attempting to revive a version of his old lawsuit against the pair and adding Hiller, who is based out of California, in order to get around California’s one year statute of limitations on defamation, by filing his lawsuit in one of the remaining states that have a three year statute of limitations.
As of press time, there still are no new lawsuits listed in PACER filed by DeCastro. This would probably explain why he scheduled and removed his livestream announcing the lawsuits and made private his video release with the same subject matter.
DeCastro did not livestream on Tuesday, after having technical issues Monday night, but no one should be surprised if he turns up in Arkansas, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin or Massachusetts when you next see him.
This is a developing news story.
