FROM OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE:
National Civil Rights Attorney Joins Grand Gateway Hotel Lawsuit Against NDN Collective, Online Booking Companies and the Rapid City Police Department, Alleging Racketeering Activity, Defamation, Negligence, and Conspiracy to Destroy the Retsel Corporation
Prominent national civil rights attorney and former Harvard Law Review editor, John Pierce, joins Rapid City’s Retsel Corporation and subsidiary Grand Gateway Hotel this week, filing a six-count federal lawsuit against NDN Collective and a host of corporate and public defendants alleging collusion, racketeering, defamation, forgery of documents, wire fraud and injurious falsehoods meant to destroy their business after a native-on-native slaying at the hotel in 2022. Pierce and Retsel Corporation filed the civil RICO complaint Friday (9/13/24) in U.S. Federal District Court in Rapid City.
“This civil RICO action will seek to prove a coordinated campaign of business interference, public defamation and personal harm to a generational family hotel business that has subsequently become a national target of ongoing legal harassment and business interference for political purposes,” Retsel attorney John Pierce said.
Grand Gateway Hotel and Retsel Corporation became embroiled in a highly politicized racial controversy following comments made by then company President Connie Uhre after a native-on-native shooting death at the hotel in March 2022.
Attorney John Pierce, after reviewing the evidence, found a basis to allege in the lawsuit that: employees and associates of NDN Collective deliberately mischaracterized events before and after the shooting incident to concoct a national boycott and racist smear campaign against hotel ownership for the expressed purpose of destroying the family business.
“NDN Collective and its members acted in concert with one another to forge emails, to incite and record Gateway employees, and lie on social media posts, to create hysteria regarding the Grand Gateway Hotel.” Retsel attorney, John Pierce said.
Grand Gateway’s ownership group was quickly targeted by a Department of Justice racial discrimination lawsuit after members and associates of NDN Collective posed as customers attempting to rent rooms at the hotel and filmed themselves interacting with hotel ownership and staff and being denied rooms, despite no intent to be actual guests at the hotel.
“NDN members looked to incite and anger by Grand Gateway employees in hopes of capturing them on film in a negative light; and NDN Collective employees and associates then circulated those interactions on social media claiming they were being denied hotel service on the basis of race,” Pierce said.
At the time of NDN’ s claims of “racial discrimination” and the filing of their DOJ discrimination claim, Retsel Corporation employed nearly a dozen Native American workers and had multiple Native American families lodged at their hotels, facts left unreported by news outlets and suspiciously ignored by social media activists.
Retsel ownership says hundreds of Native Americans have worked in their properties and tens of thousands have stayed in their rooms over more than 40-years in business.
Retsel attorney John Pierce says the nature of physical and property threats and the full context of the denial of hotel entrance to NDN staff was never investigated by local media or law enforcement and that the Rapid City Police Department failed to protect the hotels and their owners from repeated credible threats against both life and property. The lawsuit also lists Rapid City Police Department as a defendant for negligence for their failure to investigate and enforce against those threats.
“For the unforgivable crime of seeking competent police protection of their lives and valuable business properties, the Uhre family and their company became a target of cancel culture and the familiar tactics of politically motivated destruction of their hard work and community reputation,” Retsel attorney John Pierce said.
Among the facts alleged in the six-count complaint, Retsel alleges NDN personnel doctored an email, framing hotel owner Nick Uhre for racist comments and giving the appearance that Native Americans were not welcome at Grand Gateway. There has never been a company policy implemented by Gateway to that effect. In fact, there were numerous Native American families booked at the hotel at that very moment. As the forged and “cut and paste” email was circulated electronically, the federal complaint also includes allegations of federal wire fraud for purposes of business interference.
“The true story of the Grand Gateway Hotel has never been told to the public, or to the courts,” Retsel attorney John Pierce said.
“It hasn’t been told because of an emotionalized rush to judgment on issues of race and culture in America and a deep political divide that seeks to profit from racist cancel culture and the demanded destruction of targeted businesses.”
Retsel is seeking unspecified material damages for lost room bookings as a result of alleged falsehoods and malicious actions against their hotels, as well as punitive damages for enduring a two-and-a-half year smear campaign to destroy their family reputation and livelihood.
“We allege that coordinated campaign of business interference and malicious personal vendetta using manufactured evidence is a multiparty politicized conspiracy to commit financial crime requiring compensation for damages both business and personal. And we believe we will prevail.”
Other defendants listed in the complaint include, NDN Collective, multiple NDN individual staff and associates, the Rapid City Police Department, as well as online hotel reservation companies bookings.com, Expedia.com and others.
“NDN Collective has a history and has exhibited a pattern of accusing large commercial establishments of racial practices in order to receive settlement money. Unfortunately, the Grand Gateway Hotel is just the latest victim.”
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