Ryan Wedding: Former Olympic snowboarder linked to alleged drug trafficking and murder arrested | US News

A former Olympic snowboarder accused of drug trafficking and setting up the murder of a federal witness, has been arrested, the head of the FBI has said.

Ryan Wedding, a Canadian who competed at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, was held in Mexico on Thursday night, FBI director Kash Patel said.

Wedding, 44, was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted fugitives list and the agency had offered a $15m (£11m) reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

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As well as running a large-scale drug trafficking operation, authorities believe he organised several killings to further his alleged drug crimes.

He was believed to have been living in Mexico for more than a decade under the protection of the Sinaloa cartel, while helping it funnel massive quantities of drugs into the US and Canada.

Mr Patel and US Attorney General Pam Bondi confirmed his arrest on social media, with Mr Patel telling reporters at an airport near Los Angeles on Friday that Wedding was “the largest narco trafficker in modern times”, comparing him to Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman and Pablo Escobar.

He said Wedding, who finished 24th in the parallel giant slalom, according to Olympic records, was being brought to the US.

Wedding was charged in 2024 with running a drug ring that moved tons of cocaine each year in long-haul lorries between Colombia, Mexico, Southern California and Canada.

Among the aliases he used were El Jefe, Public Enemy and James Conrad King, authorities said.

In November, Ms Bondi said he had also been charged with setting up the killing of a witness in Colombia to help him avoid extradition to the US.

He and his co-conspirators used a Canadian website called The Dirty News to post a photograph of the witness so he could be identified and killed, according to prosecutors.

The witness was then followed to a restaurant in the city of Medellin and shot in the head in January.

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In Canada, Wedding faces separate drug trafficking charges dating back to 2015, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

He was convicted in the US of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and was sentenced to prison in 2010, but after being released, he returned to drug trafficking under the cartel’s protection.