Castle Rock Man Convicted on 15 Counts in $2.4M COVID Sanitizer Fraud

While businesses across the country were desperately hunting for hand sanitizer in the spring of 2020, Rico Tomas Garcia of Castle Rock was collecting their money and delivering nothing.

A federal jury in Denver found Garcia, 51, guilty on March 12 of nine counts of wire fraud and six counts of money laundering, capping a prosecution by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Colorado into a scheme that prosecutors say siphoned about $2.4 million from businesses during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Garcia operated under the name Botani Labs LLC and, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, pitched himself between April 2020 and June 2021 as a conduit for millions of bottles of hand sanitizer destined for national retailers. Prosecutors told jurors that the promised shipments never arrived and that advance deposits were quietly diverted rather than used to purchase product. The scheme, prosecutors alleged, was sustained through forged documents, shell companies, and international wire transfers.

The 15 total counts reflect the layered nature of the alleged fraud: the wire fraud convictions speak to the false promises Garcia made to extract deposits, while the money laundering counts address how those funds moved afterward. Garcia collected roughly $2.4 million in advance payments on those unfulfilled promises, according to prosecutors.

The FBI Denver Field Office flagged the jury's verdict on X, noting the case had moved from pandemic hustle to federal conviction. The verdict arrived nearly six years after Garcia allegedly began targeting businesses at a moment when disinfectant shortages gave any credible-sounding supplier enormous leverage over buyers with few alternatives.

No sentencing date was included in court documents available at the time of publication. The statutory penalties for federal wire fraud and money laundering convictions can be substantial, and the case now moves toward that phase in federal court in Denver.