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Ryan Wedding, a former Olympic snowboarder from Canada, is wanted by the FBI for his involvement in a cocaine trafficking ring.
Hank Sanders of the New York Times reports that Wedding, 43, is wanted on charges “conspiring to ship hundreds of kilograms of cocaine into Canada and the United States and on suspicion of orchestrating multiple murders.”
But somehow it gets even crazier. Wedding is just one of 16 people charged with running a transnational operation. Authorities allege the operation smuggled drugs between California and Canada from January to April 2024.
Wedding is on the lamb, however. And authorities believe he’s hiding out somewhere in Mexico.
“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,” Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said.
The U.S. attorney’s office alleges that he and another defendant, Andrew Clark, directed the “murders of two members of a family in Ontario, Canada,” in retaliation “for a stolen drug shipment.”
Authorities arrested Clark earlier this month.
The office also alleges that Wedding and Clark “ordered the murder of another victim” over a drug debt in May, according to the statement.
Canadian Olympic Snowboarder Served Prior Jail Sentence For Cocaine Trafficking
But this isn’t his first run-in with the law over drug trafficking. A U.S. judge sentenced him to four years in prison in 2010 for conspiracy to distribute cocaine. He was also the subject of a search warrant in 2006 in an investigation involving marijuana, but he was never charged by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
Wedding represented Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. He competed in the men’s parallel giant slalom event, placing 24th.