A former Olympic snowboarder has been charged with running a drug smuggling operation that allegedly shipped huge amounts of narcotics across borders and killed four people, the FBI said Thursday.
A $50,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest of Ryan James Wedding, 43, who represented Canada in the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002. Wedding is now considered an armed and dangerous fugitive, according to the FBI.
A Canadian citizen who lives in Mexico, Wedding is one of 16 defendants indicted by prosecutors in California for running a “transnational drug trafficking operation that routinely shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine” across the Americas, U.S Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement.
The gang’s leaders “orchestrated multiple murders in furtherance of these drug crimes,” Estrada said.
Wedding — whose allegedly uses the names “El Jefe,” “Giant,” and “Public Enemy” — is charged with eight felonies. He was previously charged with running a continuing criminal enterprise, murder, and conspiring to possess, distribute, and export cocaine.
A second man, Andrew Clark, 34, another Canadian citizen living in Mexico, whose aliases include “the Dictator,” was arrested on Oct. 8 by Mexican police and remains in custody. Both men face life in prison if convicted. Several of the gang have been arrested and are expected to make their first court appearances in the next week in Los Angeles, Michigan and Miami.
Prosecutors allege that the gang shipped as much as 827 pounds of of cocaine in a single month, moving it from Mexico to southern California, and then to Ontario, Canada.
“The cocaine trafficking organization’s operatives would store the cocaine in stash houses, before delivering it to the transportation network couriers for transportation to Canada using long-haul semi-trucks,” prosecutors said.
Wedding and Clark are also accused of directing the killing of two people in Ontario in November 2023 in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment.
“As alleged in the indictment, an Olympic athlete-turned-drug lord is now charged with leading a transnational organized crime group that engaged in cocaine trafficking and murder, including of innocent civilians,” Estrada said.
Matthew Allen, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Los Angeles, said the drug trafficking gang had “triggered an avalanche of violent crimes, including brutal murders” and that “Wedding, the Olympian snowboarder, went from navigating slopes to contouring a life of incessant crimes.”
Already during the investigation, undertaken in partnership with LAPD police in Ontario, officers have seized more than a ton of cocaine, three firearms, dozens of rounds of ammunition, more than $250,000 in U.S. currency and more than $3.2 million in cryptocurrency.