DENVER - The United States Attorney for the District of Colorado announces that a federal jury convicted Rico Tomas Garcia, 51, of Castle Rock, of nine counts of wire fraud and six counts of money laundering for devising a scheme in which he falsely promised to procure bulk quantities of hand sanitizer during the early months of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

According to the facts established at trial, beginning around April 2020 and continuing until June 2021, Garcia, doing business as Botani Labs, LLC., claimed he would source millions of bottles hand sanitizer as part of a multi-million-dollar deal to supply the product upstream to large national retailers. After receiving a $2.4 million deposit from victim businesses to finance the product, Garcia instead procured none and falsely claimed under oath in civil arbitration that he had wired the deposit to a Chinese hand sanitizer manufacturer. He provided false documents to support his claim. Investigation by the FBI revealed that Garcia established shell companies to use the $2.4 million deposit to pay off personal debts and buy property in California, Nevada, and Colorado, and also move over a million dollars of the remaining money into offshore accounts in the Caribbean.

United States District Judge Nina Y. Wang presided over the trial.

The FBI Denver Field Office handled the investigation.

Assistant United States Attorneys Albert Buchman, Bryan Fields, Laura Hurd, and Aly Mance handled the prosecution.

Case Number: 1:24-cr-00106-NYW