Alleged Drug Kingpin Arrested: How A Canadian Olympian Became an International Fugitive

Born in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Ryan Wedding started snowboarding seriously at the age of 12 after moving to Coquitlam, British Columbia. The grandson of the owner of a ski resort, Ryan had plenty of opportunity to hit the slopes, and Wedding was an obsessed child, spending hours mastering his craft at a young age. After winning bronze and silver medals at the 1999 and 2001 Junior World Championships, Wedding would join Team Canada for the 2002 Olympics. Wedding competed in snowboarding men’s parallel giant slalom, where he finished 24^th. Wedding would give up his career in snowboarding after the disappointing result.

After his career in snowboarding came to an end after the 2002 Olympics, Wedding became an avid weightlifter and attended Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. After two years of university, he dropped out. Wedding ended up involved with a marijuana grow operation being run out of Eighteen Carrot Farms. In 2006, the RCMP raided the property, seizing a reported $10 million worth of cannabis. Wedding was not in the country at the time of the raid, and avoided police questioning entirely. Two years later, in 2008, Wedding was arrested in an FBI sting operation after attempting to buy 24 kilograms of cocaine from an undercover informant. Wedding was reportedly planning to smuggle the cocaine into Canada for sale.

Wedding was convicted and spent 24 months in jail for the crime, just half of the 48 months he was sentenced. Wedding moved back to Canada after his release from U.S. prison in 2011. While living in Montreal in 2015, Wedding was targeted in another sting operation, this time in regards to ties with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel – one of the most infamous cartels in the world. Police seized more than 200 kilograms of cocaine, and Wedding had reportedly imported $750 million in drugs from the Sinaloa cartel. Unfortunately for prosecutors, when the RCMP executed its operation, Wedding was gone, disappearing before police could arrest him.

Ryan Wedding spent the next decade on the run from both Canadian and American operatives. According to court documents released, the ‘Wedding Criminal Enterprise’ as they called it spent the next decade trafficking cocaine from Mexico into Canada and the United States via the Sinaloa cartel. The cartel reportedly smuggled $1 billion USD in cocaine every year, and procured these profits through the use of violence. Weddings criminal enterprise was willing to kill anybody who was perceived to be a threat to the enterprise. Wedding reportedly arranged the killing of multiple members of an Ontario family in 2023, alongside another in 2024. The 2023 killings ended up being a ‘mistake’ according to court documents, with Wedding believing the victims were involved in the robbery of a drug shipment.

In 2024, U.S. police were making headway on the ‘Wedding Criminal Enterprise’ case, injecting undercover operatives into the enterprise, and making consistent arrests and seizures in the U.S. and Canada. In June 2024, U.S. prosecutors had a strong enough case to announce charges against Wedding. Wedding was charged with running a continuing criminal enterprise; committing murder in connection with a continuing criminal enterprise and assorted drug crimes; and conspiring to possess, distribute, and export cocaine. Months later, the FBI released a list including 16 members of Wedding’s enterprise and announced that 13 of the members were already in custody.

According to court documents, one of Wedding’s former associates, Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, put the arrests in motion, becoming an undercover government informant. Wedding reportedly found out about Acebedo-Garcia’s cooperation with the police, and subsequently had Acebedo-Garcia killed in Colombia in January of 2025. After Acebedo-Garcia was slain, the FBI placed Ryan Wedding on its top ten most-wanted fugitives list. The FBI raised the reward for Wedding’s capture from $50,000 USD to $10 million, and then to $15 million in November, after another series of arrests were made, but Wedding escaped capture.

On January 22, 2026, FBI director Kash Patel announced that Ryan Wedding had been arrested in Mexico, where he had been hiding for the last decade. According to Patel, Wedding had been living under the protection of the Sinaloa cartel and had been routinely shipping hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California to the United States and Canada. From an Olympic snowboarder to a drug kingpin known as ‘El-Jefe’ and ‘Giant’, Wedding now faces life in prison for his crimes. Wedding is also facing charges in Canada, meaning it will have to work alongside U.S. prosecutors to bring Wedding to justice.