Jose “Chille” DeCastro returned to livestreaming Thursday night with a stream dedicated to reimbursing one of his friends for paying Jeremiah Payne’s outstanding fines in Kentucky, allowing the controversial YouTuber to stay out of jail for the holiday season.
An agitated DeCastro made it clear that he normally does not do fundraisers between Thanksgiving and Christmas as was uncomfortable asking his fans for donations during the holiday season.
He stated that he was approached by SWE Observer, who serves in a moderation role on both Payne and DeCastro’s channel, to at least listen to Payne’s plight. This resulted in the two men having a conversation about Payne’s situation where DeCastro confronted Payne over past comments about him.
DeCastro held a successful fundraiser for Jeremiah Payne in 2023 when Payne and wife Samantha were arrested on a livestream for outstanding warrants. DeCastro went further, arranging for transportation and help for the Payne family in the time around the arrest until such a time when Payne’s actions became problematic for the YouTuber.
Payne eventually turned his pleas into a near weekly demand of his fans for money that he claimed that he needed to pay for housing for his family. Payne’s aggressive nature caused him to lash out at DeCastro and others when they failed to provide him with the same amount of attention for the rest of his fundraisers in 2023.
Recently losing monetization on his main channel, Payne originally started fundraising to make rent again. This led to ambivalence from the public in general, having lived through countless other fundraisers by the first amendment auditor.
That fundraiser seemingly morphed into a fundraiser where Payne needed roughly the same amount of money, but this time to keep himself out of jail. Eyebrows were raised as Payne stated that he needed roughly $600.00 to pay “old fines” or else he would be taken to jail for 280 days.
Payne spent most of last weekend angerly lashing out at his fans and other YouTube creators as he livestreamed for over 10 hours. He claimed he had a Monday deadline and would be in jail by Tuesday, but Tuesday came and went without Payne’s jailing.
Adding to the controversy, Payne scrubbed his YouTube of most of his livestreams from over the weekend, including the streams where he called out DeCastro and others as “not caring” about his plight.
DeCastro had Payne on his channel briefly, as he again made it clear that none of the money donated during the fundraiser was going to be distributed to Payne directly. Again, he said that the need was over as Payne’s fines were paid and showed a receipt for $526.00.
Payne’s time was limited to thanking DeCastro’s fans for their efforts and plugging his own YouTube channels. Payne is currently attempting to monetize one of his three other backup channels until he is able to restore monetization to his main channel with nightly livestreams to achieve the required watch hours for monetization.
DeCastro’s fundraiser met its goal during the Payne segment and the YouTuber was quickly dismissed and DeCastro returned to critiquing anti-police videos for the rest of his time on his livestream.
