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A former Canadian skier and top FBI fugitive is expected to appear in federal court on Monday on charges he allegedly ran a multibillion-dollar transnational drug ring and orchestrated multiple killings.
Ryan Wedding, 44, surrenders at U.S. Embassy Mexico Cities that I flew to last week Southern California After a year of hard work by the authorities USAMexico, Canada, Colombia and the Dominican Republic to arrest him.
Wedding set for first appearance in federal court santa anaCalifornia. His attorney was not listed in court docket records Monday morning.
U.S. authorities believe the former Olympian, who represented his country in individual events at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, has been hiding in Mexico for more than a decade. Last March, authorities put him on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list by offering a $15 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction.
Authorities say Wedding transported as much as 60 tons of cocaine between Colombia, Mexico, Canada and Southern California and believe he was working under the umbrella of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug gangs.
In 2024, he was indicted on federal charges of operating a criminal enterprise, murder, conspiracy to distribute cocaine and other crimes.
The murder charges accuse Wedding of directing the killings of two members of a Canadian family in 2023 in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment and of ordering slayings in 2024 over a drug debt. Last year, Wedding was indicted on new charges of plotting to kill a witness in Colombia to help him avoid extradition to the United States
Wedding was previously convicted in the United States of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and was jailed in 2010. Online records show he was released from the Bureau of Prisons in 2011.
In Canada, Wedding faces separate drug charges dating from 2015.
The 2024 indictment alleges that Wedding ran a multibillion-dollar drug ring that was Canada’s largest supplier of cocaine. The indictment alleges that the gang obtained cocaine from Colombia and worked with Mexican drug cartels to transport the drugs to Mexico by ship and plane and then to the United States in semi-trucks. The organization allegedly stored cocaine in Southern California and then shipped it to Canada and other U.S. states.