Welcome to Arrest Stories. A former Olympic snowboarder who spent nearly a year on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list has been arrested in Mexico after allegedly running a massive cocaine trafficking operation for over a decade. Here's what may have happened.
Forty-four-year-old Ryan Wedding, who competed for Canada in the two thousand two Winter Olympics in Utah, was taken into custody in Mexico after turning himself in at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City following weeks of high-stakes negotiations. Wedding had been hiding in Mexico for more than a decade while allegedly operating as a member of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Wedding was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in March with a fifteen million dollar reward for information leading to his arrest and prosecution. He used multiple aliases including El Jefe, Public Enemy, and James Conrad King while running what authorities describe as a transnational drug trafficking operation.
According to officials, Wedding is accused of smuggling six metric tons of cocaine annually into Los Angeles via semitrucks from Mexico, shipping hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and Southern California to the United States and Canada. Wedding finished twenty-fourth in the parallel giant slalom at the two thousand two Olympics before his alleged turn to drug trafficking.
FBI Director Kash Patel stated, "He is a modern day El Chapo, he is the modern-day Pablo Escobar. And he thought he could evade justice." LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell described it as "a coordinated, intelligence-driven investigation into Wedding's global drug trafficking organization which used Los Angeles as its primary point of distribution."
Wedding arrived Friday morning at Ontario International Airport in handcuffs aboard a plane with the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team as part of the custody transfer operation. He was previously arrested in June two thousand eight for conspiring to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and was charged in a superseding indictment in September two thousand twenty-four with attempted murder and other counts.
All suspects presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Do not take this report as factual, always verify facts. Thanks for watching Arrest Stories.