Magazine man accused of bad checks

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Robert Castillo, a man once charged for defrauding several small businesses, is on the Albuquerque Police Department's radar again.

In 2008, police said Castillo sold ad space in a magazine that didn't exist yet to Albuquerque businesses. Police said he then failed to publish it for a year, so he was charged with fraud.

Then, in April of 2009 the magazine finally surfaced. The district attorney's office said they did not have any viable evidence he intended to defraud his customers so the criminal charges were dropped.

"I promised them I'd get it out," Robert Castillo said in 2009. "It took a while but I got it out."

This time Castillo is accused of scamming major corporations.

"On this latest case he did approach Pizza Hut," said Lt. Harold Medina.

According to an arrest warrant, in September 2009, Castillo walked into an Albuquerque Pizza Hut and told the manager he had permission from Pizza Hut's corporate offices to use checks from his magazine business account to buy food. Police said the account was closed.

Still for five weeks Castillo wrote checks for pizza and cash totaling more than $7,000.

That's when the arrest warrant surfaced, but Castillo told News 13 at the time he knew nothing about it. "I sure don't, for what," Castillo said.

However, Castillo said he knew about the incident with Pizza Hut, but again he told us he did not commit fraud.

"That was a while back and I already took care of that," Castillo said.

He didn't write the checks, he said, but when we asked him who did he refused to answer.

Castillo told us all of this is just "a string of bad luck" and he would be contacting his lawyer to straighten it all out.

Along with Pizza Hut, police said Castillo also wrote bad checks to Papa John's Pizza and Dominos. The total amount of those checks was less than $300.