Fugitive Canadian Olympic snowboarder indicted on murder, drug charges in the US
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Ryan James Wedding has been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list since March.
PHOTO: AFP
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WASHINGTON – A Canadian former Olympian accused by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation of running one of the world’s largest cocaine networks now has a US$15 million (S$19 million) bounty on his head.
Federal officials said Ryan James Wedding, once a snowboarder at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, built a billion-dollar drug enterprise with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and ordered the murder of a witness in Colombia.
Wedding, 43, has been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list since March.
On Nov 19, the State Department increased the reward for his capture to US$15 million from US$10 million. The US government also offered US$2 million for information leading to the arrest of those involved in the killing of the witness.
The Justice Department said Wedding’s organisation imported about 60 tonnes of cocaine a year into Los Angeles by semi-truck from Mexico – roughly the weight of forty standard cars – before shipping it north to Canada.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, Attorney-General Pam Bondi called him “the largest distributor of cocaine in Canada” and said his network worked “to flood both American and Canadian communities with cocaine coming from Colombia”.
A new indictment unsealed on Nov 19 in Washington and Los Angeles adds charges of witness tampering, intimidation, murder, money laundering and drug trafficking to a case that already names more than 35 defendants.
Prosecutors said that after his 2024 indictment, Wedding used a Canadian website called The Dirty News to post photographs of a cooperating witness and the witness’s wife in an effort to locate them.
The following January, the witness, who was preparing to testify against him, was shot five times in the head while eating at a restaurant in Medellin. His wife survived.
Mr Bill Essayli, the first assistant US attorney for the Central District of California, said Wedding placed a bounty on the victim’s head, believing the killing would cause the case to collapse and prevent his extradition to the US.
Instead, he said, it became one of the central charges against him.
Law enforcement officials described Wedding as violent, elusive and protected by cartel gunmen in Mexico. FBI director Kash Patel called him “a modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar”, saying the case reflected “the scale and brutality of a global narcotics enterprise”.
The US Treasury Department announced sanctions on Wedding, his wife and 17 others – a group of people and entities in Canada, Mexico and Colombia – accused of laundering drug profits and concealing his operations.
Mr John K. Hurley, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said the move was meant “to expose the network of associates and enablers behind Ryan Wedding” and to make it harder for traffickers to profit from “poisoning our communities”.
Ms Bondi said the case reflects a broader effort to dismantle transnational drug networks.
Working with partners in Canada, Mexico and Colombia, the authorities have seized more than US$13 million in assets and US$3.2 million in cryptocurrency. BLOOMBERG
