Ex-Olympic snowboarder accused in drug smuggling ring heads to court

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A former Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned top FBI fugitive is expected to appear in federal court Monday on charges he allegedly ran a billion-dollar multinational drug trafficking ring and orchestrating multiple killings.

Ryan Wedding, 44, turned himself in at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City last week and was flown to Southern California after a yearlong effort by authorities in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Colombia and the Dominican Republic to arrest him.

Wedding is scheduled to make an initial appearance in federal court in Santa Ana, California. No attorney was listed for him on the court docket Monday morning.

U.S. authorities believe the former Olympian, who competed in a single event for his home country in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, had been hiding in Mexico for more than a decade. He was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list last March when authorities offered a $15 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

Authorities say Wedding moved as much as 60 tons of cocaine between Colombia, Mexico, Canada and Southern California and believe he was working under the protection of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug rings.

He was indicted in 2024 on federal charges of running a criminal enterprise, murder, conspiring to distribute cocaine and other crimes.

The murder charges accuse Wedding of directing the 2023 killings of two members of a Canadian family in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment, and for ordering a killing over a drug debt in 2024. Last year, Wedding was indicted on new charges of orchestrating the killing of a witness in Colombia to help him avoid extradition to the U.S.

Wedding was previously convicted in the U.S. of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and sentenced to prison in 2010. Online records show he was released from Bureau of Prisons custody in 2011.

In Canada, Wedding faces separate drug charges dating back to 2015.

The 2024 indictment says Wedding ran a billion-dollar drug trafficking group that was the largest supplier of cocaine to Canada. The group obtained cocaine from Colombia and worked with Mexican cartels to move drugs by boat and plane to Mexico and then into the U.S. using semitrucks, the indictment said. It said the group stored cocaine in Southern California before sending it to Canada and other U.S. states.