A former Canadian Olympic snowboarder has been running an international cocaine ring and is responsible for ordering multiple murders, U.S. authorities said Thursday.
Ryan Wedding, 43, remains on the run in Mexico, according to the feds. However, 12 of the 15 other suspects in the case have been rounded up in recent days.
Wedding’s organization allegedly moved massive quantities of cocaine — up to 60 tons per year — from Mexico into the U.S. and Canada, according to the Justice Department. The group used the L.A. area as a base to distribute the coke using long-haul semi-trucks, investigators said.
The group “triggered an avalanche of violent crimes, including brutal murders,” Los Angeles DEA agent Matthew Allen said in a statement. “Wedding, the Olympian snowboarder, went from navigating slopes to contouring a life of incessant crimes.”
Wedding competed for Canada in the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, finishing 24th in the parallel giant slalom. He lived in the east Vancouver suburb of Coquitlam at the time.
Not long after that, Wedding got into the international drug trade, according to the feds. He was busted in a sting operation in San Diego in 2008 and sentenced to four years in prison.
But that didn’t deter him. Wedding eventually rose to run his own unit, even earning the protection of Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa Cartel when in the country, the feds said.
Investigators have connected Wedding and his accused right-hand man, Andrew Clark, to four murders in Canada. In one case, Wedding and Clark ordered the killings of two innocent members of an Ontario family in November 2023 in a case of mistaken identity, cops said.
They were also tied to killings on April 1 and May 18 of this year, the feds said. Clark himself helped carry out the April murder, according to authorities.
Wedding and Clark were charged with murder, running a criminal enterprise and conspiring to distribute cocaine, among other crimes in a 16-count indictment in federal court in California. Wedding also faces charges in Canada.
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for tips that lead to his arrest.