A man has pleaded guilty to 10 racially-targeted burglaries in four Massachusetts communities in 2021.
The Middlesex County District Attorney's Office said Friday that 32-year-old New York resident Juan Castano had pleaded guilty to 21 indictments in connection with burglaries at homes of Asian and South Asian families in Newton, Wellesley, Andover and Quincy.
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A codefendant, Wendy Reyes, is due to face trial on April 14.
"Juan Castano chose homes to break into based specifically on the ethnicity of the residents," District Attorney Marian Ryan said in a statement. "He specifically came to Massachusetts from the New York area to commit these crimes. His plan not only violated the victims' sense of safety, but, in one instance, he created a physical threat for the family, including children, who were at home during the break."
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Four homes in Newton, four in Quincy, one in Wellesley and one in Andover were burglarized in June and July of 2021. Prosecutors say Castano scouted the homes by approaching the front door with a clipboard.
"The perpetrators" broke windows and glass doors to get inside, the district attorney's office said. About $200,000 worth of property was stolen from the homes, including cash, watches, jewelry and a gun.
Investigators used geolocation and cellphone data to identify Castano as the user of an account that was on site at each break-in, authorities said.
He faced a litany of charges, including unarmed burglary, breaking and entering, larceny of a firearm and larcenies in buildings.
Castano is already serving a sentence of five-and-a-half to 11 years in New York "for similar conduct," according to prosecutors, who did not say when that sentence began. For his Massachusetts crimes, he has been sentenced to four to five years in a sentence that will run consecutively with the one in New York. He must also serve three years of probation after his release.
The district attorney's office did not specify what burglaries Castano committed or why he targeted Asian and South Asian families. NBC10 Boston reported in 2021 that Newton police were investigating five break-ins that occurred between June 13 and July 10 in which all of the victims were Asian residents.
Earlier this year, Ryan announced the bust of "a very sophisticated ring of homebreakers," with the arrests of four Rhode Island residents suspected of orchestrating at least 43 break-ins targeting the homes of Indian and South Asian families in 25 Massachusetts communities between 2018 and 2024. Andover was one of the towns affected in that case.
The people arrested in that case were identified as Jovan Lemon, Paul Lemon, Paul Miller and Steven Berdugo.
"Those homes were being targeted largely because there was a belief ... that because of their cultural heritage, those homes would have a lot of gems, gold jewelry, and they would have a lot of cash," Ryan said at the time, adding that her office was looking into whether hate crime charges would be appropriate.
The announcement of Castano's guilty plea comes a day after federal prosecutors in Rhode Island announced a two-year prison sentence for 28-year-old Basneyareth Rebollar-Martinez of Stamford, Connecticut, in a separate set of burglaries targeting Asian homes between July of 2022 and January of 2023.
U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island Zachary Cunha said Thursday that Rebollar-Martinez, a Mexican national, faces deportation after her sentence. He said she pleaded guilty last September to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, admitting to working with others in burglaries in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, among other states.
"Residences were targeted based on a belief that they would contain large sums of cash, valuable jewelry, heirlooms and other items," Cunha's office said in a press release.
