Ryan Wedding: FBI Hunt for Canadian former Olympic snowboarder called the ‘Modern’ Pablo Escobar intensifies

The search for a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder accused of being a cocaine kingpin intensified Wednesday as senior officials from the FBI and US Department of Justice announced new charges against him relating to the murder of a federal witness.

The authorities believe the athlete, Ryan James Wedding, 44, who they say joined forces with the powerful Sinaloa cartel, is in hiding in Mexico. He is accused of running one of the world’s most prolific drug-trafficking organizations and is Canada’s dominant distributor of cocaine, said Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, at a news conference.

More than 35 people have been indicted in the case, which has left behind a trail of deaths, including a man who was supposed to testify against Wedding and was killed in Medellin, Colombia, in January.

Another killing involved a couple in their 50s who the police say were misidentified by shooters and killed in November 2023 in a home in Caledon, Ontario. The police said they believed the house had been targeted because of a dispute over a stolen drug shipment.

“Ryan Wedding is a modern day iteration of Pablo Escobar,” said Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, at a news conference in Washington. “He is responsible for engineering a narco-trafficking and narco-terrorism program that we have not seen in a long time.”

Wedding was first indicted in October 2024 on charges of trafficking large quantities of cocaine from California to Canada and three counts of murder linked to the drug ring.

His organization imports about 60 metric tonnes of cocaine a year into the United States, weighing roughly the same as 40 cars, Ms Bondi said. She announced new charges involving witness tampering and the arrests of 10 people accused of being members of the smuggling organization, seven from Canada and three from Colombia.

One of those arrested is Deepak Balwant Paradkar, a lawyer based in Brampton, Ontario, who went by the alias @Cocaine_lawyer, according to the newly unsealed indictment.

Bill Essayli, the first assistant US attorney for the Central District of California, said the lawyer told Wedding that the murder of a federal witness would make his case disappear.

“His lawyer told him, ‘If you kill this witness, the case would be dismissed’,” Mr Essayli said. “That lawyer is now in custody, and he’ll be extradited and brought to justice here in the United States.”

It was not immediately clear whether Mr Paradkar had a lawyer.

The federal witness who was killed in Medellin was tracked down by Wedding with the help of crowdsourced information, Ms Bondi said. Officials said Wedding used a Canadian website, which has since been taken down, to post photos of the man and his wife in an attempt to locate them. The authorities added that Wedding offered a bounty on the witness and hired shooters to find him. He was killed while dining at a restaurant in Medellin.

The police have confiscated $US13 million ($20m) worth of assets and $US3.2 million in cryptocurrency, as well as weapons and 2,000 kilograms of cocaine that they believe is linked to the crime group.

The US State Department has also increased its reward for information leading to Wedding’s arrest to $US15 million, from $US10 million, and is also offering a $US2 million reward for help apprehending those involved in the killing of the witness in Colombia.

Accusations surrounding Wedding’s involvement in the drug trade date back almost two decades.

Wedding was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and competed in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, placing 24th in parallel giant slalom snowboarding. Four years later, while living in British Columbia, he was at the centre of an investigation into a marijuana operation, but was not charged. He was convicted in 2010 for attempting to buy cocaine and was sentenced to four years in prison by a US judge.

One of his associates, Andrew Clark, was arrested in Mexico in October 2024 and charged with drug crimes and for conspiring with Wedding to kill another person over a drug debt.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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