Man gets 30 years in cocaine sting
By Tony Gordon Daily Herald Legal Affairs Writer
Posted 6/16/2004

A Round Lake Beach man found with more than 10 pounds of cocaine in his home was sentenced to 30 years in prison Tuesday.

Gregario Castenada, 45, was arrested Oct. 30 as he drove to a meeting he had set up with undercover agents of the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group at which he was to sell 1 ounce of cocaine.

Police found the ounce in his car, and Castenada gave them permission to search the house at 1603 Woodbine Circle in which he had lived for about three months with two other men.

Cocaine was found in cabinets, inside the walls and in a five-gallon pasta pot on top of the kitchen refrigerator, Assistant State's Attorney Matt Hoffman said.

All together, more than 10 pounds of the drug was confiscated, which Hoffman said would have sold for between $1 million and $1.5 million.

Castenada claimed he was only running an errand for the other men in the house, who fled shortly after Castenada was arrested, and had nothing to do with drug dealing or the huge stash.

"I was a guest in that house, and the drugs in the car they had given me to deliver," Castenada told Circuit Judge James Booras. "I had no idea that the drugs were in the house."

Hoffman rejected that claim. He said the undercover agents who set up the 1 ounce deal dealt strictly with Castenada, and it would have been impossible for anyone living in the house not to know the drugs were there.

"There was the smell of cocaine throughout the house; it was hidden everywhere inside of it," Hoffman said. "He was living in a house built of cocaine."

Defense attorney Mark Curran of Waukegan argued Castenada should get a sentence on the low end of the 15-year to 60-year range he was facing in keeping with his role in the obvious drug organization.

"This man was a mule for others, others who should have been prosecuted themselves," Curran said. "He had no extravagant lifestyle, no bank accounts and no fancy cars."

But Booras said even if Castenada's claim he agreed to deliver the ounce because he was unemployed and needed money was true, it was not an excuse.

"There are many people who are out of work these days, Mr. Castenada," Booras said, "and they do not move massive amounts of drugs to poison other people's children."

Castenada was convicted after a two-day trial in March by a jury that deliberated for about one hour before reaching the guilty verdict.