He hit the jackpot in controversy.
The Los Angeles landlord at the center of the lawsuit challenging Edwin Castro’s historic $2.4 billion Powerball win has landed in jail on a gun charge.
Urachi “Reggie” Romero, 47, was accused by his former tenant, Jose Rivera, of stealing the winning ticket from him before passing it off to Castro in a bombshell February lawsuit.
He was subsequently arrested in July in a separate incident and charged with both being a felon in possession of a firearm and unlawful possession of a controlled substance while armed, The US Sun reported, citing city court records.
Romero pleaded not guilty to both charges, but was convicted and sentenced to 56 days in a Los Angeles County jail as well as two years probation, the outlet reported.
Two months before his arrest, Romero backed up Rivera’s claim that Castro was not the rightful winner – but was distressed over being implicated in the suit.
“I hope my name will be cleared because it is weird that I’m in the middle of all this money, but I still have nothing. How can I steal that ticket worth billions and not have a dollar?” he told The Post.
Romero admitted that Rivera showed him the winning ticket, but denied the former tenant’s allegations that he “stole”it and “refused” to return it to him before supposedly giving it to Castro.
“I could be grimey or sheisty, but in reality, Jose Rivera did show me that ticket before he knew it was the winning ticket,” Romero recalled, noting that Rivera even explained to him why he chose what turned out to be the numbers for the largest lottery jackpot in US history.
“But I don’t know how he lost that ticket.” the mason insisted, adding that it was more likely that a friend who was over the night before the drawing and took Rivera’s work pants the next morning was the culprit.
“I let him look through my things because I had nothing to hide,” Romero said of Rivera’s frantic search after he realized the ticket was gone, which was also captured on video.
An attorney for Rivera told The Post in May that Romero took the ticket from a table – but did not elaborate on how the two men knew each other or Castro.
“It could’ve just fallen out of his pocket, but I don’t know how it got to Castro,” Romero shrugged.
Castro, for his part, fired back at Rivera’s lawsuit in May, stating that the plaintiff’s attorneys failed to establish a clear connection between himself and Reggie.
Castro gleefully accepted the lump payout of $997.6 million in February after failing to come forward and claim the ticket for months.
He has since splashed out $250,000 on a vintage Porsche and a whopping $76 million on real estate – including a $4 million pad in his native Altadena, not far from the gas station where he purchased the lottery ticket.