Canadian Olympian-turned-alleged drug lord charged over witness killing
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said a newly unsealed indictment accuses Ryan James Wedding of tracking down and posting photos online of the witness to facilitate his murder in Colombia in January of this year before the man could testify against Wedding.
The U.S. State Department has raised the reward for information that leads to Wedding’s arrest or conviction from US$10 million to US$15 million, Bondi said.
“Make no mistake about it: Ryan Wedding is a modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar,” FBI Director Kash Patel said. “He’s a modern-day iteration of El Chapo Guzman.
“This Justice Department and this FBI will work with our Canadian counterparts and the government officials across the world to bring him to justice.”
According to the indictment, Wedding had an associate pay a Canadian website, the Dirty News, to post a picture of the witness and his wife so he could be found and killed.
The website has been seized and taken down as part of Operation Giant Slalom, a joint investigation into Wedding’s alleged criminal organization led by the FBI with help from the RCMP and other U.S. and international law enforcement agencies.
The witness was shot five times while at a restaurant in Medellín, Colombia, and died instantly, according to the new indictment.
RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme said seven Canadians tied to Wedding’s organized crime group were arrested Tuesday in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta and charged with conspiracy to commit murder, drug trafficking and other offences. They will be extradited to the U.S. to face those charges.
A lawyer for Wedding was also arrested after putting up “a little bit of resistance” to the arresting officers, said Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California.
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“His lawyer advised them to kill this witness,” he said. “His lawyer told them, if you kill this witness, the case would be dismissed.
“When you have lawyers who are assisting international drug trafficking players on how to evade law enforcement and to murder witnesses, we can’t have that stand.”
An eighth Canadian wanted by international authorities is still at large, officials said.
“I want to emphasize that our work is not done,” Duheme told reporters.
“Fugitive Ryan Wedding remains one of the top threats to Canadian public safety and, as per the previous indictment, continues to run an over $1-billion-a-year criminal enterprise.”
Wedding was charged last June with murder and drug crimes. Those charges were augmented in September in an indictment that alleged Wedding and others arranged the shipment of some 60 tons of cocaine a year using long-haul semi trucks to move the drugs between Colombia, Mexico, Southern California and Canada.
Bondi said Wedding has ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the largest drug trafficking organizations based in Mexico, which has been listed as a foreign terrorist organization in the U.S. and Canada.
The arrests announced Wednesday bring the total number of people arrested and indicted in connection with Wedding to 36, Patel said.
Earlier this year, Wedding was added to the FBI’s list of 10 most wanted fugitives.
Bondi and other officials noted that authorities continue to believe that Wedding has likely changed his appearance to avoid detection.
“He’ll do anything to avoid capture,” said Akil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.
“But someone like Ryan Wedding is going to stick out in Mexico. And that is why we’re soliciting the public’s help to try to identify, locate him and arrest him again.”
Among his aliases, according to the FBI, are “El Jefe,” “Public Enemy” and “James Conrad King.”
Wedding finished 24th in parallel giant slalom at the 2002 Olympics.
Wedding and another Canadian citizen, who was arrested by Mexican authorities in October, are accused of directing the Nov. 20, 2023 murders of two members of a family in Caledon, Ont., in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment. Ontario Provincial Police have said the family was “completely innocent” and mistakenly targeted.
Wedding faces separate “unresolved” drug trafficking charges in Canada that date back to 2015, the RCMP said last October.
He was previously convicted in the U.S. of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and was sentenced to prison in 2010, federal records show. U.S. authorities believe that after Wedding’s release, he resumed drug trafficking and has been protected by the Sinaloa Cartel.
— with files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press
© 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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