The October 2024 arrest of Andrew Clark – the alleged second-in-command to a sprawling and murderous international narcotics empire headed by an Olympian nicknamed “The Giant” – was a dramatic one.
Mexican Navy SEALs scooped him up on federal drug and murder charges filed by prosecutors in Los Angeles, his name listed in an indictment alongside Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding and nearly a dozen other accused narcos who were using the L.A. area as a central depot for its drug operation. Wedding, at that time, remained a fugitive, living large in Mexico City with a fleet of luxury cars, a museum-worthy collection of racing motorcycles, and a bevy of women ready to do his dirty work, which, prosecutors say, included setting up a brazen lunchtime assassination of an FBI cooperating informant at a bustling Medellín mall in Colombia.
Behind the scenes, and with Clark behind bars, a corruption plot was put in motion that led to the takedown of Luis Benítez Alcántara, a federal judge who now stands accused in L.A. of releasing Clark from custody last February in exchange for a $2 million bribe, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli announced Thursday.
Benítez, 49, was arrested Sunday in Colombia. He is charged in a nine-count indictment with being an accessory after the fact, accused of allowing Clark, who is now cooperating with the FBI in the case against his childhood friend Wedding, to walk out of a Mexican lockup. His freedom, however, was short-lived. Clark, now 36, was arrested days later and soon was extradited to Los Angeles, where he is now incarcerated as a federal informant.
The takedown of a federal judge in Mexico City came with the help of an international Homeland Security Task Force working with specialized police in that country, Attorney General Todd Blanche said.
“Crooked public officials, no matter where they are, who assist drug traffickers operating here at home will face justice in the United States,” Blanche said after Essayli announced the judge’s takedown.
“This case underscores my office’s commitment to dismantling criminal organizations at every level, including by holding accountable those who abuse positions of public trust,” Essayli said.
Wedding was captured in Mexico earlier this year and is awaiting two separate federal trials on drug‑trafficking, murder, and attempted murder charges, currently scheduled for March 31, 2027, and October 26, 2027, in a DTLA federal lockup. He spent more than a decade on the run and was the subject of a $10 million federal bounty.
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