I hunted drug lords for the DEA. Here’s the truth about the hunt for Olympics star Ryan Wedding

It is now the $15million question: how can one man stay out of the clutches of police across North and South America?

How can he stay one step ahead of investigators in the US, Mexico, Canada and Colombia. Even if he is a former Olympian. Even if he is – as the FBI said this week – a modern-day Pablo Escobar.

Eight months have passed since Ryan Wedding was added to the FBI’s list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. He is accused of ‘controlling one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations’ in the world. He faces charges including murder, witness tampering and intimidation, money laundering and drug trafficking.

US officials this week increased the reward for information leading to Wedding’s arrest from $10million to $15million. Yet still he remains on the run.  

I spent decades working for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), conducting undercover operations for the FBI drug task force and hunting down drug lords across the US, Mexico, Afghanistan and South America. And I have bad news.

There have been large-scale drug traffickers in Mexico that took 10 years to find and 20 years to arrest. The problem for law enforcement hunting Wedding? In Mexico, fugitives can hide in the mountains or in the jungle.

It won’t be anything fancy: they go from one location to another. They might spend one, two or three nights in the same bed. And then they are on the move again. Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman was known for using tunnels – he would escape underground from one house to another. But he was also very well insulated.

Greed will always take someone down sooner than later. To stay one step ahead, fugitives need lots of money and a small contingent of loyal lieutenants who are not going to give then up – Wedding’s circle will be very tight and his communication is going to be very, very restricted.

It also depends on the extreme levels that he is willing to go to. The FBI believe Wedding may have undergone plastic surgery. Others have tried that – unfortunately for Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the ex-head of the Juarez Cartel, that was his demise. He died on the surgery table. 

So can it be done? Yes. But, again, it has to be under the cloak of darkness.

The main factor we always look at, especially when it comes to Mexico, is: who is protecting the trafficker? A lot of bribery takes place – with El Chapo, for example, we would hear whispers that this unit or that unit knew where he was.

But money talks and if you pay off those who need to be paid off, you can stay well hidden. If you make someone upset, they can turn on you.

I spent years chasing cartels and there are some tricks of the trade that we can’t reveal to the public. But let me tell you: there are eyes everywhere and our phones are very vulnerable. 

It’s easy to track people – especially in certain foreign countries where, once you hit their airspace, they know you’re in the area. The best surveillance, though, is always boots on the ground.

The FBI released two recent photos of Wedding – allegedly taken in in 2024. So there was obviously surveillance on him. What happened? Did they lose him? Did he quickly disappear through a tunnel and now he’s gone into deep hiding? That’s a possibility. Is he protected by the Mexican government because he has also bribed them? That’s a possibility, too.

The FBI believe Wedding has been living under the protection of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the world’s most notorious groups once headed by El Chapo. 

Now, if some ‘Gringo’ just went into Mexico and said ‘I need to hide,’ that’s not going to happen.

Wedding has to have protection from somebody higher up, who has the money and the influence to keep him hidden. So the million-dollar question is why? Why would Sinaloa protect him?

He is a ‘Gringo’ in Mexico, who is 6ft 3ins and has a $15million bounty on his head. So what’s his collateral? What is his leverage?

The Sinaloa cartel is splitting. There are only two of El Chapo’s sons still out there – Ivan Guzman Salazar and Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar – so there is a void.

Wedding has been operating since at least 2015. He’s been successful, he was untouchable, he was underneath the surface, and he has a history ordering murders. It would be very unusual to see a Gringo climb up the hierarchy of a Mexican cartel. But he may have checked all those boxes.

Then it would make sense that he is insulated: he’s now one of the leaders.

The authorities believe he is still running his operation – despite many of his associates being arrested. If Wedding is working with Sinaloa, he will simply move his drugs through their other cells.

They have so many different tentacles in the US that if one cell goes down, they will use another. Or they’ll wait, re-establish a new person there and reconstruct the wheel.

I find it very interesting that Wedding’s alleged right-hand man, Andrew Clark, was apprehended last October and yet Wedding was not. Was he in the area at the time? Is he more protected?

The cartel does not do favors for the US authorities. Instead, giving up Clark was a gesture by the Mexican government to say: see what we’re doing for you.

It would be interesting to know if the right-hand man talked or kept his mouth shut. If the authorities can get someone to roll on the next layer up, that’s how you start dismantling these cartels.

But Clark’s arrest will force Wedding to change everything – his lifestyle, his patterns and how they do their operations.

He’s a big fish now and there is a lot riding on this. 

The Trump administration has leaned very hard on the Mexican government – if it came out that higher ups have been bribed to protect him, that’s going to cause a lot of duress between the two administrations.

I’m not saying it’s being done. I’m not saying it’s not being done. But we have more muscle right now in DC than we’ve had in a long time. Trump is not playing any games.

It could well be that the Mexican government is not willing to give Wedding up. They might want to keep him as political leverage against the US. That has happened in the past.

But it will be interesting to see if he is served up on a platter within the next six, eight or 12 months. 

If he isn’t? You can guarantee he’s left Mexico. Or he’s very well insulated. Or he has been killed.