Mexican judge arrested after U.S. charges him of accepting $2M bribe in case linked to former Olympian

Fox News · Robert McGreevy · 2026-11-05 19:01 UTC

Luis Benítez Alcántara allegedly took a $2 million bribe to release Ryan Wedding's second-in-command in a billion-dollar cocaine enterprise.

Luis Benítez Alcántara, a Mexican judge accused of accepting a bribe to release a transnational cocaine smuggler, was arrested in Colombia on Sunday after the U.S. charged him with nine counts of being an accessory after the fact.

Benítez, according to a Thursday announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice, accepted a $2 million bribe from Canadian national Ryan Clark, who the DOJ alleges was second-in-command to former Olympic snowboarder Ryan J. Wedding in the latter's international drug dealing empire.

"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.," FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement.

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