A man on parole for posing as a police officer during a violent home invasion is now accused of selling guns and drugs to undercover federal agents at his Portage Park home.
Juan Rodriguez, of the 5800 block of West Leland Avenue, is charged in federal court with being a felon in possession of a firearm. Investigators say Rodriguez sold guns and quantities of cocaine, MDMA, and methamphetamine to an undercover agent during a series of controlled buys starting in August and ending last month.
The federal complaint details multiple recorded drug and gun transactions outside Rodriguez’s home.
On August 13, an undercover agent met Rodriguez at his home, where Rodriguez allegedly sold cocaine and MDMA for $500. Later that evening, the agent returned to Rodriguez’s home to buy a Glock .40-caliber pistol, along with three magazines and ammunition, for $1,000, the complaint said. The gun’s serial number had been partially obliterated.
Rodriguez allegedly continued selling narcotics over the following weeks. On October 2, he allegedly sold the same undercover agent and a second officer cocaine and 62 pressed methamphetamine pills for $500. Two weeks later, on October 16, he allegedly sold them about a pound of methamphetamine for $1,600. Both transactions occurred outside his Portage Park residence.
According to the filing, Rodriguez texted the agent on October 26 to offer a Sig Sauer pistol for $1,000. Three days later, Rodriguez got into the agent’s car outside his home, pulled the Sig Sauer P226 9mm pistol from his waistband, and placed it in the center cup holder, the complaint said. The firearm was later determined to be stolen. During the encounter, Rodriguez allegedly displayed a bag of MDMA pills and said he expected another shipment of methamphetamine on November 1.
The investigation was led by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Illinois Department of Corrections records show that Juan Rodriguez was paroled on February 18 after serving roughly half of a 10½-year sentence he received for a violent home invasion in Belmont Cragin on August 3, 2019.
According to court records, a 55-year-old man and his wife were asleep at their Belmont Cragin home when they heard a knock at their front door early that morning. The man looked outside and saw four or five men and a woman standing on the porch.
“Police,” one of the strangers shouted. All of them wore bulletproof vests marked “POLICE,” and one man displayed a police star on a chain around his neck. Someone on the porch yelled the homeowner’s full name. Believing something terrible had happened, the man opened the door.
The group immediately forced its way inside. One of the intruders pointed a gun at the homeowner’s chest and pushed him into the dining room, where he was tied to a chair.
When the man’s 33-year-old wife came out of the bedroom, she was quickly restrained by several of the offenders while others ransacked the home, demanding $1 million or a large stash of cocaine from someone they thought was there.
But the person they were looking for wasn’t home. The crew instead abducted the woman, forcing her into an SUV and driving away. Prosecutors later said the vehicle was registered to Ricardo Rodriguez, a man who had recently been exonerated of murder. The kidnappers took the woman to one house, then moved her to another location.
The following day, police raided a Portage Park home allegedly linked to the Rodriguez family. Inside, officers found three bulletproof vests labeled “POLICE” in a closet, more vests in a china cabinet, a police badge hanging from a chain, and ten firearms that fired only blanks, prosecutors said. No one of interest to the police was there during the search.
That same day, the kidnappers released the woman, leaving her on a street corner in Hermosa.
When officers returned to the Portage Park residence the next day, they found the tenants moving out. Police arrested Juan Rodriguez at the scene. He was on parole at the time.
While he was on electronic monitoring awaiting trial in that case, officials executed a search warrant at his Portage Park home. Inside his bedroom, police said they found a loaded pistol with a defaced serial number and a laser sight; three 31-round ammunition magazines, two other ammunition magazines, gun parts, bundles of ammunition, $14,625 worth of cocaine, ten pounds of pot worth $72,560, ten grams of hash, 21 MDMA pills, bundles of fake currency and two accounting ledgers.
He ultimately received a three-year sentence in that matter.
