Ryan Wedding, a Canadian former Olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug kingpin, has been arrested in Mexico and brought to the US to face cocaine trafficking and murder charges, FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Friday.
Wedding, 44, has been on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list, and the US Department of State recently offered a US$15 million reward for information leading to his capture.
“Just to tell you how bad of a guy Ryan Wedding is, he went from an Olympic snowboarder to the largest narco trafficker in modern times,” Patel said at an airport tarmac news conference in Ontario, California. “He is a modern day El Chapo. He is a modern day Pablo Escobar.”
Photo: FBI via Reuters
“This individual and his organization in the Sinaloa Cartel poured narcotics into the streets of North America and killed too many of our youth, and corrupted too many of our citizens,” he said.
Patel said Wedding — whose aliases include “El Jefe,” “Giant” and “Public Enemy” — was arrested on Thursday night in Mexico City.
The FBI director declined to provide any details about Wedding’s capture other than to say it was an “inter-agency wide effort” that included law enforcement partners in Mexico.
Patel said Wedding is believed to have been hiding in Mexico for more than a decade, and has been wanted on cocaine trafficking and murder charges since 2024.
Akil Davis, the assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, told reporters that Wedding is expected to have an initial US court appearance tomorrow morning.
Wedding is accused of smuggling about 60 tonnes of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico into the US and Canada, and of “orchestrating multiple murders of victims and government witnesses,” Davis said.
Davis said 36 people connected to Wedding’s alleged drug trafficking ring have been arrested and assets worth tens of millions of dollars have been seized including luxury vehicles, valuable artwork and jewelry.
Seven people allegedly connected to Wedding’s cocaine smuggling operation were arrested in Canada in November last year, including his lawyer, Deepak Paradkar, and the US is seeking their extradition.
Paradkar allegedly told Wedding that if he killed a witness in a pending criminal case against him, the case would go away, US prosecutors said.
The witness was shot five times in the head and killed in January last year at a restaurant in Medellin, Colombia, they said.
Wedding competed for Canada in snowboarding at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, finishing 24th in the parallel giant slalom.
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