For more than a year, Canadian Ryan Wedding, a former Olympic snowboarder, was wanted by United States authorities, including appearing on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. There are accusations of cocaine trafficking and murder against him. Wedding is identified as responsible for directing cocaine trafficking operations from Colombia to Canada, through Mexico, as a member of the Sinaloa cartel, considered one of the most active drug trafficking organizations in the world.
The search ended last Friday (23), with the arrest of the former Olympic athlete, now 44 years old, in Mexico and his handover to the FBI. A reward of US$15 million (around R$79.3 million at current prices) was offered for information leading to his capture.
Recently, FBI Director Kash Patel defined Wedding as “a modern version of Pablo Escobar”, the famous Colombian drug trafficker who died in 1993. The former athlete is known as “El Jefe”, “Giant” and “Public Enemy”. Among the accusations is that of sending hundreds of millions of dollars in cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico, to the United States and Canada.
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— He is responsible for orchestrating a drug trafficking and narcoterrorism program that we haven’t seen in a long time — said Kash Patel at the time.
Among the accusations of involvement in homicides is that of the murder of a man, in January 2025, in the Colombian city of Medellín, who was going to testify against him, according to American authorities. Ryan Wedding was first indicted in October 2024 for trafficking large quantities of cocaine from California to Canada and three murders linked to the drug network.
Seven people allegedly linked to Wedding’s cocaine trafficking operation were arrested in Canada in November last year, including his lawyer, identified as Deepak Balwant Paradkar, and the United States requested his extradition. By the end of last year, another 35 people had been charged in connection with the case.
Sports career
Ryan Wedding was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario and competed in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, finishing 24th in the giant slalom parallel snowboard. In 2006, while living in British Columbia, he was at the center of an investigation into a marijuana operation but was not charged. He was convicted in 2010 of attempting to buy cocaine and sentenced to four years in prison by a US judge, recalls The New York Times.
At the end of December last year, a series of operations by Mexican authorities. According to the US, he had been hiding in the country for more than 10 years. In one of the actions in which the former athlete was targeted, two Olympic medals were seized, in addition to doses of methamphetamine and marijuana, 62 high-end motorcycles, two vehicles, works of art, ammunition, a shipment of firearms and several documents, at four addresses.
