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A highly sought-after drug kingpin was captured when officials tracked his wife’s social media account and pinpointed his location during their lavish European vacation.
Luis Manuel Picado Grijalba, 43, was arrested at a London airport in December after he was accused of shipping cocaine from Limón, Costa Rica to the US, Nicaragua’s La Prensa reported.
Grijabla, who goes by his alias “Shock,” was wanted by the US Drug Enforcement Administration for several months for his alleged involvement in international drug trafficking, said Randall Zúñiga the director of Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department (OIJ).
The alleged kingpin – who rarely traveled with his 32-year-old wife – reportedly purchased $20,000 worth of plane tickets to fly his wife and family to Europe.
Grijabla, who is a naturalized Costa Rican citizen, met his wife in Paris and had planned to ring in the New Year with his family in England before his arrest.
To document the vacation, Grijabla’s wife, Estefania McDonald Rodriguez, made several posts to a now-deleted Instagram account during her European travels, according to The Sun.
One post captured the couple posing underneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Zúñiga said that Rodriguez frequently traveled abroad and posted about her adventures across her social media platforms, the outlet added.
She boasted about her vacations on sunny beaches, where she was spotted holding two parrots, and in Rome where she sat in front of the famed Trevi Fountain
DEA agents, who had been tracking Grijabla since he took off from Costa Rica’s Juan Santamaría Airport, used the post of the couple in Paris to the suspected drug kingpin’s location, Costa Rican outlet Teletica reported.
The arrest was approved after the DEA obtained an international warrant.
The American agency wanted to capture Grijabla in Europe instead of Costa Rica as the Central American nation prohibits extradition of its citizens in the country.
Grijabla was in court the day after his arrest and is currently fighting his extradition to the US, where he could face a long jail sentence, the Sun reported.
Costa Rica’s Attorney General Carlo Diaz praised the DEA’s arrest but noted his office did not have any charges against Grijabla.
“For us it is also an important capture, because we had not yet been able to attribute any criminal act to him in our country, but I repeat, he has been linked in some investigations to drug trafficking in Limón,” Díaz, according to Teletica.
The international capture divided officials in the country, with President Rodrigo Chaves Robles and security Minister Mario Zamora questioning the OIJ.
“It is outrageous that the Costa Rican police, I mean the Judicial Investigation Agency, the Judiciary and the Attorney General’s Office, with everyone knowing what Shock does, do not even have an open case against him, while the gringos leave the country and capture him in London. What do the gringos have that the OIJ does not have? Is it decency?” Chaves questioned, according to La Teja.
Zúñiga rebutted saying the DEA had an incentive to capture the people suspected of harming its country’s citizens.
“There is an investment. The rulers are crystal clear that the DEA is very important to prevent the scourge of drugs,” he said.
The OIJ director said his American counterparts were also better invested and had access to technology to open phones
