Jose “Chille” DeCastro suffered another huge financial loss on Tuesday as Judge H. Jay Ford III ordered him to pay sanctions of $4,560.00 to Michael “Blue Bacon” Pierattini in his ongoing California Superior Court lawsuit against Kate Peter, Team Skeptic, Daniel Clement and Pierattini.
DeCastro filed suit against the group of defendants early in 2023 as an essential refiling of his defamation and harassment lawsuit against Kate Peter and another set of defendants that he had amended away from harassment and defamation to focus on federal copyright claims against Peter, YouTube/Google and others.
At the time, DeCastro claimed that the lawsuit made more sense to file in California as he resided there and he claimed all of the actions involved in the case, despite evidence otherwise, all occurred within the confines of the state.
DeCastro failed to serve Team Skeptic and was ruled to have failed to have properly served Daniel Clement with his amended complaint. Kate Peter was apparently properly served and the Clerk of the Court ruled that she was in default for not replying to the case, though the judge never issued a default judgement against her, leaving Pierattini the only defendant to accept service in the case.
The defendants are alleged to have run a vast criminal organization with the sole intent to harass and defame DeCastro in 2022. Despite DeCastro’s claims that all of the activities occurred in California, his allegations against the defendants involve incidents in Colorado and Massachusetts and charge all of the defendants equally. DeCastro has yet to provide any evidence of either the criminal conspiracy or proof of involvement of any of the defendants.
DeCastro has stated on his YouTube live streams that he was out to financially crush the defendants as he was working Pro Se in the case and that all of the defendants would be financially damaged as they needed to hire attorneys. He said he’d file the case as many times as possible in as many jurisdictions as possible until either he or defendant Peter died.
It is unclear if his opinion has changed now that he hired an attorney to represent him in the case.
Tuesday’s sanctions apparently come from DeCastro refusing to sit for a scheduled deposition as he claimed that it was too far away from his new residence in Las Vegas to reasonably travel to the deposition. DeCastro, at the time, had not informed the Court nor the defense of his move to Las Vegas as his official address remained the California home of one of his financial backers.
It is unclear if these are new sanctions, as Pierattini had filed multiple requests for sanctions against DeCastro on the January date indicated by the court and one of those requests had been previously granted in the sum of $4,560.00.
DeCastro’s motion to reconsider sanctions granted to Pierattini for $1,635.00 earlier in the year was denied by the Court on Tuesday as it was found to have been improperly filed.
Judge Ford ordered DeCastro to sit for a deposition on August 21, 2024. No deposition of any of the defendants has been ordered at this time.