It was like a ghost sighting. And the FBI agents had to be sure they weren’t mistaken.

The investigators, conducting surveillance near a Starbucks in Mexico City on Jan. 22, 2024, had just seen two men walk in.

One of them, a hulking six-foot-three-inch figure, may just have been the ghost they’d been hunting.

They checked a 2013 Quebec driver’s licence photo to be certain. He looked different, all these years later. But there was little doubt when the man was later heard inside, using his real first name.

“Ryan.”

The FBI had managed to get eyes on Ryan James Wedding, a Canadian they suspected of running a violent cocaine-smuggling operation across South and North America.

The episode at the coffee shop — described by U.S. prosecutors in court documents summarizing their case against

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