The U.S. Department of State is offering a $10 million reward for the capture of a former Olympic snowboarder accused of running a major transnational drug trafficking organization and orchestrating multiple murders, authorities announced Thursday.
Ryan Wedding, 43, a Canadian national, has also been added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office revealed Thursday.
Former Olympic snowboarder and Canadian national Ryan Wedding is seen in a photo released by the FBI.
Wedding is wanted for allegedly running a drug trafficking network “that routinely shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California, to Canada and other locations in the United States, and for orchestrating multiple murders and an attempted murder in furtherance of these drug crimes,” the FBI said in a press release.
He was indicted last year in Los Angeles federal court on multiple federal charges, including running a continuing criminal enterprise, committing murder in connection with a continuing criminal enterprise and assorted drug crimes, the FBI said.
He and his alleged second-in-command, 34-year-old Canadian Andrew Clark, are accused of conspiring to move hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Mexico to the Los Angeles area, where it was stored in stash houses before being transported to Canada and U.S. cities in long-haul semi-trucks, authorities said.
Wedding and Clark are also accused of ordering the murders of multiple people in Canada to achieve the organization’s aims, the FBI said.
Clark was arrested in Mexico last year by Mexican authorities and was among the 29 fugitives who were extradited to the U.S. from Mexico last week, while Wedding’s whereabouts remain unknown, the FBI said.
Former Olympic snowboarder and Canadian national Ryan Wedding is seen in photos released by the FBI.
“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,” Akil Davis, the assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, said in a statement on Thursday. “The alleged murders of his competitors make Wedding a very dangerous man, and his addition to the list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, coupled with a major reward offer by the State Department, will make the public our partner so that we can catch up with him before he puts anyone else in danger.”
The State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs’ $10 million reward for information leading to Wedding’s arrest and/or conviction was authorized by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the FBI said.
The reward is in addition to a $50,000 reward already offered by the FBI for information leading to Wedding’s apprehension, arrest and extradition, the agency said.
Wedding competed for Canada in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where he placed 24th in the parallel giant slalom, before allegedly running the billion-dollar cocaine operation from Mexico for more than a dozen years, officials said.
He is believed to reside in Mexico but investigators have not ruled out his presence elsewhere, including in the U.S., Canada, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala or Costa Rica. His aliases include “El Jefe,” “Giant,” “Public Enemy,” “James Conrad King” and “Jesse King,” the FBI said.
If convicted of murder and attempted murder charges, he faces a mandatory minimum penalty of life in federal prison, the DOJ said. The continuing criminal enterprise charges also carry a mandatory minimum penalty of life in federal prison.
