Former Olympic snowboarder and Canadian nationwide Ryan Wedding ceremony, 43, has been positioned on the FBI’s 10 most wished fugitives record for allegedly operating a violent transnational drug trafficking community.
Wedding ceremony is needed for allegedly transport tons of of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, by way of Mexico and southern California, to Canada and US areas, and for orchestrating a number of murders and an tried homicide to additional these drug crimes.
The US is providing a reward of as much as $10m (£7.7m) for info resulting in Wedding ceremony’s arrest or conviction.
Investigators imagine he’s residing in Mexico, however haven’t dominated out his presence within the US, Canada, different Latin American nations or elsewhere.
It was not clear if he has a lawyer.
Wedding ceremony competed in Big Slalom snowboarding for Canada through the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake Metropolis.
His aliases embody “El Jefe,” “Big,” “Public Enemy,” “James Conrad King,” and “Jesse King,” the FBI stated.
In June 2024, Wedding ceremony and his confederate Andrew Clark, 34, additionally Canadian, have been charged in California with operating a seamless legal enterprise, committing homicide in reference to the enterprise and various drug crimes, and conspiring to own, distribute, and export cocaine.
Clark was arrested final October by Mexican authorities and was amongst 29 fugitives extradited to the US from Mexico final week.
The US indictment alleges that Wedding ceremony and Clark directed the 20 November 2023 murders of two relations in Ontario, Canada, in retaliation for a stolen drug cargo that handed by way of southern California. One other member of the family survived the taking pictures however was left with severe bodily accidents, the FBI stated.
Wedding ceremony and Clark allegedly additionally ordered the homicide of one other sufferer on 18 Could 2024 over a drug debt, in keeping with the FBI.
“The alleged murders of his rivals make Wedding ceremony a really harmful man, and his addition to the record of Ten Most Needed Fugitives, coupled with a significant reward supply by the State Division, will make the general public our companion in order that we are able to meet up with him earlier than he places anybody else in peril,” Akil Davis, the assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles Discipline Workplace, stated in a press launch on Thursday.
