Amy Taxin, Russ Bynum and Julie Watson
Ontario, California: Former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding, a top FBI fugitive accused of moving more than 60 tonnes of cocaine into the US annually and orchestrating several killings, was arrested in Mexico and then flown to California, officials said.
Wedding, 44, turned himself in at the US embassy in Mexico City. FBI Director Kash Patel said his arrest came after US investigators worked with authorities in Mexico, Canada, Colombia and the Dominican Republic for more than a year.
Officials say Wedding moved cocaine between Colombia, Mexico, Canada and Southern California, and they believe he was working under the protection of the Sinaloa Cartel – one of Mexico’s most powerful drug rings. Authorities said his aliases included “El Jefe,“, “Public Enemy” and “James Conrad Kin”.
Patel described Wedding as the “largest narco-trafficker in modern times”, akin to notorious drug lords such as Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Pablo Escobar.
“He’s the modern-day El Chapo,” Patel told a news conference on Friday, California time, comparing Wedding to the legendary former Sinaloa cartel kingpin, who is imprisoned in the US after pleading guilty to drug-trafficking charges.
Wedding was previously convicted in the US of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and was sentenced to prison in 2010, federal records show. He now faces charges related to running a multinational drug trafficking ring and the killings of a federal witness and three other people.
It was not immediately known if Wedding had an attorney who could comment on his behalf. He had no lawyers listed in federal court records for the cases pending against him.
US authorities believe the former Olympian, who competed in a single event for his home country in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, had been hiding in Mexico for more than a decade before his apprehension.
Wedding was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list last March, and authorities had offered a $US15 million ($22 million) reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction.
“When you go after a guy like Ryan Wedding, it takes a united front, and that’s what you’re seeing here,” said Patel, who declined to give details about the arrest. He praised Mexico’s government and “global partnerships” for their roles in the operation.
Wedding is expected to appear in federal court Monday, said Akil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI field office in Los Angeles.
Davis said 36 people have been arrested in connection with the drug ring Wedding is accused of running, and authorities seized large volumes of drugs, weapons and cash, along with millions of dollars worth of automobiles, motorcycles, artwork and jewellery from Wedding and others charged in the case.
Wedding was indicted in the US in 2024 on federal charges of running a criminal enterprise, murder, conspiring to distribute cocaine and other crimes.
The indictment says Wedding ran a billion-dollar drug trafficking group that was the largest supplier of cocaine to Canada.
The group obtained cocaine from Colombia and worked with Mexican drug cartels to move drugs by boat and plane to Mexico and then into the US using semitrailers, the indictment said. It said the group stored cocaine in Southern California before sending it to other US states and Canada.
The murder charges accuse Wedding of directing the 2023 killings of two members of a Canadian family in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment, and for ordering a killing over a drug debt in 2024.
Last November, Wedding was indicted on new charges of orchestrating the killing of a witness in Colombia to help him avoid extradition to the US.
Authorities said Wedding and co-conspirators used a Canadian website called The Dirty News to post a photograph of the witness so he could be identified and killed. The witness was then followed to a restaurant in Medellín in January and shot in the head.
Wedding’s arrest was also applauded in Canada, where he faces separate drug trafficking charges that date back to 2015. Gary Anandasangaree, Canada’s minister of public safety, called it “a significant step forward” in an international fight against illegal drugs.
Patel identified a second apprehended fugitive as Alejandro Rosales Castillo, a 27-year-old US citizen charged with murder in the 2016 killing of a North Carolina woman. He also faces a federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. According to the FBI, Castillo was arrested a week ago in Mexico.
Mexico has increasingly sent detained cartel members to the US as it attempts to offset mounting threats by US President Donald Trump, who said last month US forces “will now start hitting land” south of the border to target drug trafficking rings.
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