CHICAGO — A man has been handed a 12-year sentence for posing as a cop to commit an armed home invasion just months after being exonerated of a murder conviction for which he received a 60-year sentence in 1997.
Earlier this year, while the home invasion case was pending, Ricardo Rodriguez, 51, won a $5.5 million settlement from the city as compensation for the 22 years he spent in prison for the now-vacated and dismissed murder conviction.
‘I was wrongly convicted’
Even for Cook County bond court, where freshly-arrested defendants freely offered bold and unlikely excuses, Rodriguezs’ had a doozy when he was brought in on the home invasion charge in September 2020.
After a prosecutor laid out detailed allegations of the home invasion and kidnapping against Rodriguez, they noted that Rodriguez was a convicted murderer who received a 60-year sentence in 1997.
“It was vacated,” Rodriguez interjected firmly. “I was wrongly convicted. It was vacated.”
The prosecutor knew nothing about the wrongful conviction finding, but Rodriguez’s claim was absolutely true.
“We concluded that the totality of the evidence was insufficient to support the [murder conviction],” a spokesperson for State’s Attorney Kim Foxx told us at the time. “On March 27, 2018, we asked the court to vacate the conviction, and the motion was granted by order of the court, and the case was dismissed.”
Almost immediately after the dismissal, Rodriguez walked out of prison and directly into the hands of agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The feds were preparing to deport him to Mexico because his status as a permanent U.S. resident was revoked when he was convicted of murder. One year later, in March 2019, a federal immigration judge terminated deportation hearings after concluding that Rodriguez was not deportable, according to the University of Michigan’s National Registry of Exonerations.
At long last, Rodriguez was finally a free man.
Home invasion
About four months later, at 2:25 a.m. on August 3, 2020, a 55-year-old Belmont Cragin man and his wife heard a knock on their front door. The man peeked outside and saw four or five men and a woman dressed as cops on his front porch.
“Police,” yelled one of the strangers, all wearing bulletproof vests emblazoned with the word “POLICE.” One wore a police star on a chain around his neck. Someone on the porch yelled the man’s full name. Thinking something terrible had happened, the man opened his door.
The entire group of strangers barged in. An intruder in a police vest held a gun to the man’s chest and pushed him all the way into the dining room, where the victim was tied to a chair.
When the man’s 33-year-old wife saw what was happening, she got out of bed and was quickly restrained by some of the home invaders while other offenders scoured the couple’s home demanding $1 million or a massive trove of cocaine from someone they thought would be there.
But that third person wasn’t home, and the crew took the woman hostage, shoving her into an SUV and driving away. Later, prosecutors would allege that Ricardo Rodriguez, freshly exonerated, owned the SUV. The kidnappers took the woman to a home. Then, they shuffled her to a second location.
Meanwhile, the man that the home invaders were looking for when they broke into the couple’s home started getting phone calls demanding $1 million in cash for the safe return of the hostage. The calls came from various phone numbers, including one he recognized as being from a woman named Teresa Rodriguez, prosecutors claimed. The man allegedly recognized Teresa’s voice during some of the demand calls.
Upon recognizing Teresa’s voice, the man remembered that she had a brother who had recently been released from prison—Ricardo. So, the man found images of Ricardo Rodriguez on Google and showed them to the man whose wife had been kidnapped. The man thought Ricardo looked like one of the home invaders, but he wasn’t sure. Prosecutors claimed that his wife would later confirm that Ricardo was involved.
On the day after the home invasion, police raided a Portage Park home that was allegedly connected to the Rodriguez family. Cops found three bulletproof “police” vests in a closet, more vests in a cabinet, a police badge hanging on a chain necklace, and ten firearms that only shoot blanks, prosecutors said.
That same day, the kidnappers dumped the abducted woman on a street corner in Hermosa. The very next day, police returned to the Portage Park home upon hearing that the people who lived in the raided apartment were moving out.
Cops arrested 38-year-old Juan Rodriguez at the scene. Prosecutors charged him with multiple counts of home invasion, aggravated kidnapping for ransom, and unlawful restraint. He pleaded guilty to home invasion and other felonies in August 2023. Judge Aleksandra Gillespie sentenced him to 10½ years.
Police also arrested Christina Rodriguez, 41, after the abducted woman identified her as someone who was at one of the hideout locations. She received probation from Judge Gillespie last year after pleading guilty to aggravated kidnapping for ransom.
Teresa Rodriguez, who was extradited from San Diego to face charges, received a six-year sentence for aggravated kidnapping for ransom from Judge William Gamboney in August 2024.
And, then, there’s Ricardo. Yesterday, he pleaded guilty to home invasion armed with a dangerous weapon, false impersonation of a peace officer during the commission of a felony, and aggravated unlawful restraint, according to court records. Judge Gamboney sentenced him to 12 years. He will receive credit for the 1,535 days he spent on electronic monitoring while the case was pending.
