Warrant Issued for Man Convicted in Travel-Fraud Case

A 43-year-old Canoga Park man is being sought by the U.S. Secret Service after he failed to appear in federal court for the second time Monday to be sentenced for his part in a telemarketing scheme believed to have bilked thousands of credit-card holders.

U.S. District Judge A. Wallace Tashima issued an arrest warrant for Roy William Castner, who was convicted in September of 27 counts of fraud.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Mark H. Bonner said telephone callers for Castner’s Westwood travel agency used the promise of free Hawaiian vacations to obtain more than 3,000 credit-card numbers that were used to make more than $1.2 million in unauthorized purchases.

Castner, who over Bonner’s objection has been free on $100,000 bail since last November, also failed to appear Nov. 2.

At that hearing, Tashima rescheduled Castner’s sentencing to Monday after his attorney, Marcia J. Brewer, said that Castner could have been injured in an accident.

Bonner said Castner appears to have moved out of his Canoga Park home. But he said that Brewer argued in court Monday that Castner may have been kidnaped because the interior of his house has been vandalized.

“The government position is that he trashed the house gratuitously because the co-owner of the home testified against him during the trial,” Bonner said.

Castner could be sentenced to a maximum of 210 years in federal prison and fined $1 million. He could be sentenced to an additional five years for failing to appear, Bonner said. The manager of Castner’s travel agency, Lawrence David Berry, 40, of Malibu, who was convicted Sept. 1 of 26 felony counts of fraud, was sentenced to six years in federal prison and fined $250,000.

Both men were arrested in November, 1986, after the Secret Service received thousands of complaints from suspicious consumers, Bonner said.

The company, which operated out of a Wilshire Boulevard office in Westwood, had 90 phones and employed more than 360 telephone salesmen, far more than the usual “boiler room” sales operations, Bonner said.