Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have charged a fugitive South Los Angeles gang member and a Mexico City cartel boss, accusing both of helping former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding run what the Justice Department calls a billion-dollar drug trafficking operation and avoid U.S. law enforcement.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California announced the cases on Tuesday, Nov. 10. Roberto Gomez, 51, faces a six-count indictment. A separate two-count indictment against Edgar Aaron Vazquez Alvarado, 42, known as "El General," was unsealed the same day. Mexican police shot Vazquez to death last week, prosecutors said. Wedding, 45, is a Canadian former Olympic athlete who prosecutors say turned to drug trafficking. He faces charges that he ordered several killings, and the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, where he once appeared, now shows him as captured.

What the indictments say

Gomez, a U.S. citizen from the Central-Alameda area of South Los Angeles, fled to Mexico after he was charged with two counts of second-degree robbery in Los Angeles Superior Court in 2000. A federal grand jury indicted him on drug trafficking and money laundering charges in 2018, and he is still considered a fugitive in both cases.

While in Mexico, the indictment says, Gomez dealt directly with leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, and built relationships with people with access to law enforcement information inside Mexican and U.S. agencies. Prosecutors allege he passed details about arrests, drug seizures, warrants and new criminal charges to co-conspirators, Wedding among them.

From 2016 to 2026, Gomez is accused of supplying cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl to several trafficking groups, Wedding's among them. Prosecutors say the drugs moved into Mexico by plane and boat through Central America, then over land into the United States and Canada.

Between October 2024 and January 2026, Gomez allegedly helped Wedding avoid arrest. He also tried to broker the sale of about 1,000 pounds of methamphetamine to Wedding for roughly $550,000 in cryptocurrency, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors say Vazquez claimed to have founded and to run a Mexico City group called El Cártel Nuevo Imperio. They allege he trafficked cocaine for Wedding's organization and supplied near-daily code words that drivers gave to police and soldiers at Mexican checkpoints so loads could pass. He also paid Mexican officials to slow investigations, tamper with evidence and get charges dropped against Wedding's associates, the indictment says.

The charges against Gomez

Gomez is charged with conspiring to distribute drugs, conspiring to import them, three counts of being an accessory after the fact and attempting to deal with a specially designated narcotics trafficker, the U.S. label applied to Wedding. If convicted on every count, he would face a mandatory minimum of 10 years in federal prison and a possible life sentence.

An indictment is an allegation, and Gomez is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court. The Justice Department still describes him as a fugitive living in Mexico. The FBI investigated the case with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The cases come days after the FBI announced, on Nov. 5, the arrest of Luis Benítez Alcántara, a Mexican judge it says took bribes and used his position to help Wedding and his associates.