US Charges Mexico City Judge With Taking $2 Million Bribe to Free Cartel Figure

A Mexico City district judge took a $2 million bribe and freed an alleged cocaine trafficker the same day, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday. A superseding indictment charges Judge Luis Benítez Alcántara with nine counts of accessory after the fact. Each count carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

The DOJ unsealed the charges after authorities arrested Benítez Alcántara on Sunday in Colombia. The United States will seek his extradition.

What does the indictment allege?

According to the superseding indictment, Andrew Clark — known as "the Dictator" — transferred approximately $2.75 million in small increments through intermediaries between November 2024 and February 2025. Mexican authorities had arrested Clark in October 2024 in Jalisco on drug trafficking and murder charges.

The DOJ states that on Feb. 24, 2025, Benítez Alcántara, who oversaw Clark's extradition proceedings, received $2 million from Clark. He then granted Clark bond and ordered his release on the same day.

Prosecutors accuse Clark of running a transnational criminal organization alongside Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder. The U.S. State Department describes the pair as heading a "complex transnational organized crime organization which coordinated the procurement and transportation of cocaine from South America to the United States and Canada."

The takeaway: prosecutors have traced the money, the timeline and the release order to a single sitting judge.

What did U.S. officials say?

U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the arrest Thursday on X.

"Crooked public officials, no matter where they are, who assist drug traffickers operating here at home will face justice in the U.S.," Blanche wrote.

FBI Director Kash Patel also commented on the arrest, describing the alleged scheme in detail.

"Benítez Alcántara was a district judge in Mexico City who allegedly accepted $2 million in exchange for granting bond to and ordering the release of Wedding's second-in-command, while Wedding was orchestrating a billion-dollar transnational criminal organization and the largest supplier of cocaine to Canada with connections in Colombia, Mexico and the U.S.," Patel wrote on X.

Patel credited the Los Angeles FBI office, the Bogotá Law Enforcement Attaché and the Justice Department for the work. The takeaway for practitioners: U.S. prosecutors intend to reach foreign judicial officers through accessory-after-the-fact charges when bribe-funded releases benefit trafficking networks operating on U.S. soil.

How does the case connect to Ryan Wedding?

Wedding, once an Olympian, landed on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted List before his capture. Authorities apprehended him on Jan. 23, though the circumstances of his arrest remain disputed.

Mexico's security chief, Omar García Harfuch, initially said Wedding voluntarily turned himself in at a Mexican embassy. García Harfuch said the surrender followed a meeting he held with Patel and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson.

Then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi told a different story.

"At my direction, Department of Justice agents [at the FBI] have apprehended yet another member of the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted List: Ryan Wedding, the onetime Olympian snowboarder turned alleged violent cocaine kingpin," Bondi wrote on X at the time of the arrest.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum doubled down on the surrender narrative at a January press conference. She presented an Instagram photo of Wedding in front of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City as proof. Investigators later found the image was AI-generated and tied to a fake Instagram account.

Wedding's own lawyer dismissed the surrender account in January.

"Any spin that the government of Mexico is putting on this, that he surrendered, is inaccurate," he told reporters.

What happens next?

Wedding now sits in federal custody in Los Angeles. He awaits two separate criminal trials: one scheduled for March 31, 2027, and the other for Oct. 26, 2027.

Benítez Alcántara faces extradition proceedings from Colombia before any U.S. trial can begin. If convicted on all nine counts, he faces a theoretical maximum of 135 years in prison.

The bottom line: the case pairs a sitting foreign judge with the alleged finance chief of a billion-dollar cocaine pipeline, and U.S. prosecutors plan to try both in Los Angeles.