A former Olympic snowboarder has been indicted on charges of running a drug smuggling operation for allegedly transporting large amounts of drugs across the border and killing four people, the FBI announced Thursday.
A $50,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of Ryan James Wedding, 43, who represented Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Wedding is currently considered an armed and dangerous fugitive, according to the FBI.
Wedding, a Canadian citizen living in Mexico, is one of 16 defendants charged by California prosecutors with running a “cross-border drug trafficking operation that regularly transported hundreds of kilograms of cocaine” throughout the Americas. one of them, U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement.
Estrada said gang leaders “organized multiple murders in furtherance of these drug crimes.”
Wedding, who allegedly used the names “El Jefe,” “Giant” and “Public Enemy,” has been charged with eight felonies. He was previously charged with running a continuing criminal enterprise, murder, and conspiracy to possess, distribute, and export cocaine.
The second man, Andrew Clark, 34, a Canadian living in Mexico and known by other aliases such as “The Dictator,” was arrested by Mexican police on October 8 and remains in custody. . If convicted, both could face life in prison. Several members of the gang have been arrested and are scheduled to make their first court appearances next week in Los Angeles, Michigan and Miami.
Prosecutors allege that in one month, the gang moved 827 pounds of cocaine from Mexico to Southern California and then to Ontario, Canada.
“The cocaine trafficking organization’s operatives planned to store the cocaine in a stash and then deliver it to couriers in the transportation network for transport by long-distance semi-trucks to Canada,” prosecutors said.
Wedding and Clark are also charged with directing the killing of two people in Ontario in November 2023 in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment.
“As alleged in the indictment, the Olympic athlete-turned-drug lord is charged with leading a transnational organized crime group involved in cocaine trafficking and killings, including of innocent civilians. “There are,” Estrada said.
Matthew Allen, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Los Angeles, said the drug lord had “prompted an avalanche of violent crimes, including brutal murders” and added: “Wedding, an Olympic snowboarder, “I started drawing contours by navigating.” A life of constant crime. ”
In an investigation conducted in conjunction with the Los Angeles Police Department in Ontario, officers have already recovered more than a ton of cocaine, three firearms, dozens of rounds of ammunition, and more than $250,000 in U.S. currency and $3.2 million in virtual currency. More than that has been confiscated.
