I Team: International Fugitive Received Free Jackson Healthcare
March 28, 2011 11:51 PM

Reporting Jim DeFede

MIAMI (CBS4) – Early on the morning of December 5, Eliseo Dellatore Castro, surrounded by friends and family, died at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

He was 63.

And his name wasn’t really Eliseo Dellatore Castro.

His real name was Luis Franco and he was a convicted Colombian drug trafficker who had been an international federal fugitive for nearly 30 years.


So how does a man on the run for decades up at Jackson racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in charity care at taxpayer expense? How could he have tricked the system into giving him free healthcare? Well to understand that we need to go back to 1982, and the early days of Miami’s notorious Cocaine Cowboy era.

Franco would hire his fellow Colombians to swallow condoms filled with cocaine and fly into Miami International Airport. Franco would accompany the smugglers on the plane – paying for their tickets and making sure they didn’t run with the merchandise. Franco made numerous trips between Bogotá and Miami before authorities caught on to his mule train and charged him with three counts of cocaine distribution.

“He was convicted of those charges,â€