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 travelled with his 32-year-old wife – reportedly purchased $20,000 worth of plane tickets to fly his wife and family to Europe.
Grijabla, a naturalized Costa Rican citizen, met his wife in Paris and planned to ring in the New Year with his family in England before his arrest.
According to The Sun, Grijabla’s wife, Estefania McDonald Rodriguez, posted several photos of her European travels to a now-deleted Instagram account to document the vacation.
One post captured the couple posing underneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Zúñiga said that Rodriguez frequently travelled 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 the extradition of its citizens.
