Trio will face federal charges
Men arrested at hotel were buying, selling guns and drugs, documents allege
Three men arrested last week at the Maven Hotel in downtown Denver as MLB All-star Game festivities kicked off will face gun charges in federal court, charging documents show.
Richard Platt, Ricardo Rodriguez and Gabriel Rodriguez all face federal charges of possession of a firearm by a previous offender. Gabriel Rodriguez also faces a charge of intent to distribute methamphetamine, court records show.
Despite Denver police officers’ fears that the men might have plotted a mass shooting, there is no evidence presented in their local or federal arrest affidavits that they planned to do so.
Instead the federal criminal complaint against the men outlines prosecutors’ allegations that they were buying and selling drugs and guns to each other.
Investigators recovered a total of 15 guns connected to the three men at the hotel as well as cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and fentanyl, according to the complaint. The hotel called law enforcement after a housekeeper saw guns in one of the men’s rooms and notified her supervisor.
Ricardo Rodriguez told investigators that he was in Denver to buy guns and drugs, according to the federal complaint. He told investigators he was trying to make connections with cartel organizations so he could investigate the drug dealers and turn them in to law enforcement. He also said he planned to sell guns. He said a woman in Idaho buys guns for him to resell, because he can’t legally purchase guns because he is a felon.
He told investigators that he had no intention of shooting people, the complaint states.
Platt, in an interview after his arrest, told a Denver police detective and a federal agent that he met Ricardo Rodriguez through a mutual friend who wanted to buy guns, according to the complaint. Platt said the mutual friend told him that Ricardo Rodriguez was a firearms seller.
The two men checked into the Maven Hotel together on July 7 and visited each other’s rooms. Platt said he saw Ricardo Rodriguez take out gun parts in his hotel room and start to assemble the weapons.
Investigators found more than $10,000 in Platt’s room plus fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine and at least eight guns, according to the federal complaint. Investigators found at least three guns in Ricardo Rodriguez’s room as well as ammunition.
Law enforcement arrested Gabriel Rodriguez in the hotel and found methamphetamine, heroin
and a handgun in the backpack he wore, according to the complaint. Gabriel Rodriguez told investigators that he bought a pound of methamphetamine and some heroin in Commerce City to deliver to Platt at the Maven Hotel. Gabriel Rodriguez said he knows Platt sells guns and drugs.
Platt told investigators that Ricardo Rodriguez talked about shooting people in Mexico, but Ricardo Rodriguez later told investigators that he had no intention of shooting anyone.
Platt said he bought a rifle from Ricardo Rodriguez that weekend and that he planned to resell it to Gabriel Rodriguez for a $500 profit.
Gabriel Rodriguez and Ricardo Rodriguez denied any intentions of violence in jailhouse interviews this week with The Denver Post.
Gabriel Rodriguez said he didn’t know anything about the number of guns at the hotel or why the guns were there. He said he was going to drop off some “dope” for Platt.
“The only reason I was carrying the gun that day was because I was carrying a lot of dope,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to kill nobody. I wasn’t trying to do no terrorist (expletive).”
Ricardo Rodriguez said in an interview with The Post that he had no plans of selling or buying guns and drugs at the hotel, which contradicts statements he gave to law enforcement that are included in the federal complaint. He said he intended to fly his children out to Denver that weekend for sightseeing and to look for a house to buy in Boulder.
“I don’t live the kind of life the Denver prosecutor is trying to say I do,” he said.
Platt declined a request from The Post to be interviewed.
A woman who was arrested by Denver police with the men, Kanoe Serikawa, was not charged in federal court Friday. She declined to be interviewed by police after her arrest. She remained incarcerated in the Denver Downtown Detention Center on Friday.
All three men appeared Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court of Colorado for their initial court hearings. They did not speak, except to answer “yes” to the judge’s questions.
All three will remain jailed until their next hearings, which are scheduled for next week.
All three have criminal histories. Ricardo Rodriguez was convicted in four felony cases from 2001 to 2015, including possession of a controlled substance and criminal impersonation. Gabriel Rodriguez has been convicted of felonies three times in Colorado from 2014 to 2020, including in two drug cases. Richard Platt’s Colorado criminal history dates to 1998 and includes convictions of theft, drug possession and possession of a weapon by a previous offender.
Platt had a Douglas County warrant at the time of his arrest, according to the federal complaint.
A Boulder police report shows officers contacted Platt on April 6 while arresting a man he was with.
Boulder police officers learned that Platt had a warrant at that time but did not arrest him because the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office would not accept him at the county jail, according to the police report.
The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to an email this week requesting information about the jail’s intake standards.
Many Colorado jails created policies that prevented some arrestees from being booked so the facilities could keep their populations low during the pandemic and reduce the spread of the virus.