A year ago, Jose “Chille” DeCastro had just pulled in over $52,000.00 in donations from his four active GoFundMes in under two months but instead of riding high on he wave of support from his fans, he was sitting in the Clark County, Nevada, Detention Center wondering what the hell happened to his life.
In March of 2023, DeCastro was arrested in Nevada for being a little too aggressive during a first amendment audit of a routine traffic stop. The diminutive DeCastro, describing himself as an “Alpha Male,” refused to move out of the way of a Las Vegas Metro cop who was writing a routine random ticket in the parking lot o a strip mall off the strip.
When DeCastro refused to move and continued to insult the cop, the cop attempted to move DeCastro, resulting in a struggle and an arrest of the height challenged alpha male. DeCastro claimed to be severely injured with injuries he previously claimed in other encounters with police, and from a phantom shot to the groin when he was searched that, mysteriously, the audio from DeCastro’s own recording failed to pick up, let alone the multiple bodycams of the incident.
DeCastro sued for millions of dollars and the case has lingered between life and death for the two years that have passed, with DeCastro occasionally selling his services to others (going from selling “legal documents” to “ChatGPT advice” over the past year), as they too discover can write a federal civil rights lawsuit at home that will never go anywhere.
DeCastro managed to delay his trial for the 2023 charges until March of 2024, while picking up another arrest in Las Vegas for being a little too aggressive with cops while blundering through a crime scene.
He fundraised off both arrests and was riding high on new cash from his subscribers in the early part of 2024. At one point he established not one but two fundraising efforts to provide a source of cash for all of his friends in the auditing community who might not have his ability to draw large donations.
His fans were involved, his fans were happy, his fans had money to keep his operation alive.
And then he was convicted of the March 2023 incident.
DeCastro’s own actions earned him a harsher than normal sentence from Judge Ann Zimmerman. His attitude, his approach to delaying the trial (faking food poisoning at one point to get out of appearing at a hearing, then livestreaming for over 4 hours and showing no signs of the explosive diarrhea he used the excuse to avoid said hearing), and his overall assholery got him a surprise four-month sentence to jail and DeCastro went away.
While his crowd sourcing campaigns briefly flourished in the days that followed his arrest, the case of “out of sight, out of mind” set in as the campaigns only receive real donations when he’d do his semi-weekly audio addresses from jail.
DeCastro apparently became strapped for cash quickly as the man who made his reputation off of selling “get out of ticket free” trifolds and being a “self-taught constitutional law scholar” needed to hire lawyers to get him out of the mess he made for himself.
He served three and a half months out of his four-month sentence before winning an appeal of his March 2023 charges. His February 2024 charges were dropped before going to trial. Both actions allegedly ate up the $50,000 or so he had raised in the year and his situation was not helped by the fact that he then needed to hire representation in his on-going lawsuit against Kate Peter, Team Skeptic, Daniel Clement and Michael “Blue Bacon” Pierattini.
Upon his release from jail, DeCastro floundered in his fundraising effort, taking days to return to live streaming after claiming PTSD from his time away from the world. His initial livestream return couldn’t match the numbers that others put up on his channel when substituting for him, and his opportunity to fundraise was greatly diminished by the huge delay in addressing his fans.
While he could have focused on sales of his existing “get out of jail free” line of products, a trifold and a “cop card” essentially, his reputation was ruined as his own arrests and conviction showed his core audience that his system didn’t work.
Somewhere in his time in jail, DeCastro came up with an idea to turn things around. A board game apparently based on the success of the game “Trivial Pursuit” from the 1980s. The game focuses on teaching his version of the history of the United States Constitution with the intention of selling the game to schools around the country.
With no experience producing board games, the process of creating the product that would revolutionize the American learning system has faced major delays (a Thanksgiving 2024 release date is now May 2025), and lackluster pre-sales at best.
DeCastro claimed to be so strapped for cash on hand that he could not match funds in his fundraising efforts for Craig Hendry, after repeatedly delaying the launch of his GoFundMe campaign.
The YouTuber recently relieved his attorney of his duties in his lawsuit involving Peter and Pierattini and then asked for the case to be dismissed without prejudice. In that situation, he’s apparently asking to avoid roughly $10,000.00 in current sanctions and a total loss by asking for a “reset” of the case that he can refile at a later time.
He does have some hope with his on-going lawsuit against the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police department, through probably not through a multi-million-dollar settlement. DeCastro’s final viable claims, false arrest and illegal search, have survived two attempts at summary judgment by the LVMPD. He may eventually prevail on those charges, but proving damage may be difficult and the LVMPD, after two years of dealing with DeCastro, is unlikely to settle for the millions he’s asking for.
His threat to sue the state for false imprisonment is likely to go nowhere as Nevada’s state law caps compensation for wrongful imprisonment at $50,000.00 a year. For serving a little under four months, DeCastro can expect a payout capped at $16,667.00 for his time in jail. His investment in the suit could ultimately cost him more than anything he’d receive in compensation, which would add to his plight, rather than bring about his much-desired turn around.
As it stands now, DeCastro is either unwilling or unable to invest in the time it would take to reestablish his YouTube channel and his non-board game product sales. His live streams, while never huge in attendance, were a source of monthly revenue as his big money investors saw nothing in donating thousands of dollars a month in superchat donations.
His board game, which he admits to generating with ChatGPT and outsourcing the production to a man in Indonesia, has resulted in a display of catastrophic errors on the hundreds of cards used for the game. DeCastro even acknowledged this, stating that the game was going to ship with errors as he did not have the time or patience to do quality control.
While previously claiming a thousand presales for the game, on his Saturday live stream, DeCastro said, “I got 50 people — I don’t know how many people preordered the board game.” His own counter on his website indicates that he’s sold a total of five board games.
As it stands now, without a significant investor to bail out his board game project, or his desire to go back to begging or superchat money each day to keep him afloat, the future seems bleak for DeCastro.
Without a last-minute miracle, and rather than cutting and running, declaring bankruptcy may be his only path forward for his brand in 2025.
This is a continuing news story.
