Former Castroville Police Chief Christopher Filline’s conviction for wire fraud has been upheld by a federal appellate court. He was found guilty of conspiring to burn his wife’s car, report it stolen, and collect over $14,000 in insurance money.
Filline argued that conspiracy didn’t occur, since he did not consult others about the insurance-fraud scheme. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans disagreed, upholding his conviction.
Background
In July 2016, then-Castroville Police Chief Filline reported his wife’s 2007 Lincoln Navigator stolen.
Two days prior, the vehicle had been found burned on a remote road in Bexar County. Filline proceeded to file a police report with the Lytle Police Department and later submitted an insurance claim to Farmers Insurance Group.
The government did not believe him.
Multiple Castroville police officers testified that Filline complained openly about money. He and his wife reportedly had substantial medical bills, about $30,000 in credit-card debt, and were delinquent on their mortgage and car payments.
Filline would also commonly refer to the Navigator as a “piece of junk,” complaining that it needed costly repairs and that he wanted someone to get rid of it.
According to court filings, he even texted the mechanic who had quoted the repairs, asking him to “take [the Navigator] and burn it,” and providing his address. The mechanic thought the message was a joke because it included “LOL.”
Filline later asked Ambrose Rymers—an animal-control officer who worked under him—if he had any “piece of shit cousins” who would “take care of the vehicle and get rid of it.”
It turns out he did.
Oscar Hernandez—Rymer’s cousin with a criminal history—agreed to help. He took the Navigator from the police station and drove it to the dead-end road, ultimately setting it ablaze before being driven back by Filline.
Filline’s story was that he left his garage door open with the Navigator’s keys hung just inside the door. When he woke up in the morning he realized the vehicle was gone, but did not report it for two days, believing his sons may have taken it.
Lytle officers found Filline’s behavior odd when reporting the theft, both because of the delay and that he was calm and quick with his answers. They found no evidence of a theft at his residence.
A separate investigation of the burning by the Bexar County Fire Department and a Farmers claims investigator raised additional concerns. The Navigator was ruled a “total burn,” meaning the vehicle still had the valuable components ordinarily removed in car thefts, such as tires, rims, and the like.
Nonetheless, as investigations stalled, Farmers paid roughly $14,000 to cover the remainder of the Navigator’s loan.
Prosecution
The investigation was reopened after Hernandez was arrested for a separate incident in 2018 and made statements that raised suspicion. This time, when Rymers was questioned again, he came clean.
A federal grand jury in the Western District of Texas indicted Filline in January 2020—a year after leaving his position as police chief—for one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud related to the staged theft and insurance claim.
The FBI, Texas Department of Public Safety, and the Bexar County Fire Marshal’s Office investigated the case.
Filline was ultimately convicted by the grand jury in October 2024. The district court sentenced him to three years’ probation, imposed a $5,000 fine, and ordered $14,388.25 in restitution.
Filline appealed his conviction to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, disputing only whether he had committed conspiracy. He argued that the government failed to prove that he “agreed with another person to pursue the fraudulent objective,” as is required.
He did not dispute that the Navigator was deliberately destroyed to obtain insurance money.
Last week, the Fifth Circuit affirmed Filline’s conviction.
“We do not sit as a thirteenth juror,” wrote Circuit Judge Don R. Willett. “Our task is not to retry the case or second-guess the jury’s common-sense inferences.”
“It is to decide whether a rational jury could have returned this verdict. On this record, and under that deferential standard, the answer is yes. A rational jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that Filline did more than arrange for the Navigator’s destruction. It could find that he and at least one other person agreed to make the vehicle disappear as the first step in an insurance-fraud scheme,” the opinion continued.
Filline served as Castroville police chief from 2013 to 2019. Successor Brian Jackson would resign from the position in 2022 after being caught on another officer’s body camera using the N-word repeatedly at a murder scene.
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