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Olympic Snowboarder Turned "Cocaine Kingpin" Arrested In Mexico, Flown To US To Face Justice

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
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Former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding, who was wanted by the FBI for allegedly leading a violent international drug trafficking operation, has been arrested, the Justice Department announced Friday.

Wedding, 44, had been added to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list in March. He was taken into custody in Mexico on Thursday night and was being transported to the United States, FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on X.

U.S. authorities believe he had lived in Mexico for more than a decade, according to Yahoo. 

“This is a huge day for a safer North America, and the world,” Patel said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi also confirmed the arrest, writing on X, “At my direction, @FBI agents have apprehended yet another member of the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted List: Ryan Wedding, the onetime Olympian snowboarder-turned alleged violent cocaine kingpin.”

U.S. officials had previously compared Wedding to notorious drug lords Pablo Escobar and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. More details about the arrest are expected at a news conference in California later Friday.

According to a federal indictment unsealed in November, Wedding faces nine charges, including conspiracy to distribute, possess, and export cocaine, conspiracy to commit murder linked to a criminal enterprise, witness tampering, and money laundering.

Prosecutors say his network moved hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and Southern California to Canada and other parts of the United States. He is also accused of ordering multiple killings connected to the drug operation.

The Bureau's Sam Cooper reports that their American law-enforcement sources argue that Wedding's success involved leveraging cross-border trucking enterprises captured by Indo-Canadian mafia networks, and that Canada's police and judicial response failed to counter the threat.

"Over the last three or four years there've been Canadians killed in the Yucatán. And we all know they're tied to drug trafficking — Greater Toronto and Montreal," a senior U.S. investigator told The Bureau for an exclusive report last year, on the improbable rise of a Canadian to the heights of Mexico's most powerful cartel.

"A fair number of Quebecers too — bikers. They all work in Mexico. But somehow Ryan Wedding got all these people to work together."

The source described the Cancún area as a "haven for Canadian organized crime — mid- to high-level drug dealers coordinating with Mexican counterparts to bring stuff into Canada."

Wedding, known by aliases such as “El Jefe,” “Giant,” and “Public Enemy,” represented Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where he placed 24th in the parallel giant slalom.

Yahoo reported that when he was added to the most wanted list, Akil Davis, assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said, “Wedding went from shredding powder on the slopes at the Olympics to distributing powder cocaine on the streets of U.S. cities and in his native Canada. The alleged murders of his competitors make Wedding a very dangerous man.”

Authorities had said they believed Wedding was living in Mexico under the protection of the Sinaloa cartel.

The U.S. State Department initially offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture, later increasing it to $15 million. In November, the Justice Department also announced 10 related arrests under “Operation Giant Slalom.”

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