Olympic Snowboarder Ryan James Wedding Added to FBI 10 Most Wanted List with $10 Million Reward After Key FBI Informant Killed

 "Socalj" for Borderland Beat

The United States Department of State's Narcotics Rewards Program is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Ryan James Wedding.

Ryan James Wedding is wanted for allegedly running and participating in a transnational drug trafficking operation that routinely shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California, to Canada, and other locations in the United States.

The decision for the US to increase the reward from the FBI's initial $50,000 reward comes just days after one of Wedding’s right-hand men was linked to the Kinahan Cartel in documents filed by US attorneys in a Canadian court. 

Also revealed in Canada was that Wedding helped negotiate the release of a fellow Canadian trafficker who owed a drug debt to the Sinaloa Cartel and that a key FBI informant and likely the witness to testify against Wedding was killed in Colombia at the end of January.

Wedding is a Canadian citizen, and may be hiding out in Mexico still. Investigators have not ruled out his presence in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, or elsewhere.

The former Olympic snowboarder and Canadian national, Ryan Wedding, 43, has been added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, Akil Davis, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office announced.

Ryan Wedding, whose aliases, according to the FBI, include “James Conrad King,” and “Jesse King.” His nicknames are “El Jefe,” “Giant,” and “Public Enemy.” He was born in Thunder Bay, Canada, and competed in the Giant Slalom snowboarding competition during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah finishing 24th.

“The former Canadian snowboarder unleashed an avalanche of death and destruction, here and abroad,” said Matthew Allen, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA’s Los Angeles Field Division. “He earned the name ‘El Jefe’, becoming boss of a violent transnational drug trafficking organization. 

Now, his face will be on ‘The Top 10 Most Wanted’ posters. He’s unremitting, callous and greed-driven. Today’s announcement beams an even brighter searchlight on him. We ask that you help us find him.”

Last year, he was indicted in the US for heading a large drug trafficking network along with 15 others. Police suspect Wedding is hiding out in Mexico and is still heavily involved in the global drug trade.

“Wedding went from shredding powder on the slopes at the Olympics to distributing powder cocaine on the streets of U.S. cities and in his native Canada,” said Davis. “The alleged murders of his competitors make Wedding a very dangerous man, and his addition to the list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, coupled with a major reward offer by the State Department, will make the public our partner so that we can catch up with him before he puts anyone else in danger.”

Wedding's Wedding

It’s not the first time Wedding has come to the attention of the US government. In 2009, he was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Canadian authorities had also previously investigated him as part of drug investigations. 

The contacts Wedding then made at San Diego's Metropolitan Correctional Center awaiting trial helped his future career in drug trafficking. The FBI monitored Wedding's calls behind bars and he regularly made comments like "I'm meeting people, I'm learning." 

Nazfar Mirhadi, linked to Canadian gangs and Iranian money launderers.

At the time, Wedding appeared to be forging ties that put him at the crossroads of Mexican Cartels and Iranian-linked criminal networks. Two years later, in 2011 Wedding married Nazfar Mirhadi, an Iranian-born woman while he was incarcerated at Reeves County Detention Center in west Texas.

The Vancouver B.C. businesswoman was later named in two investigations involving money laundering, drug trafficking and kidnapping. She was acquitted along with another woman, the three men who held the man were convicted.

The kidnapping case saw alleged drug trafficker Sulaiman Safi kidnapped from a Vancouver restaurant in October 2011 and held at gunpoint over missing cash. Safi had agreed to a money laundering scheme directed by the woman whose unnamed clients needed to move "roughly $2 million per week" into the U.S.

After $440,000 of that cash disappeared, which he said went to the wrong place due to a miscommunication. To cover the loss, Safi got $264,000 from a friend to hand over. While on route to return the money, the police stopped the cab and seized the money. Mirhadi did not believe Safi when he told her what had happened. She accused him of robbing her.

Safi was ordered to meet the woman's associates at a West End pub. Two men led Safi to a loading dock, where he was blindfolded, handcuffed and whisked away in a black SUV. With a Glock pressed to his forehead, Safi was told "these guys want their money now or you are going to die today," he later testified. After 20 hours, Safi negotiated his release by offering a combination of cash and cocaine to cover the missing money. When he fled he was picked up by police who had been told about the possible kidnapping.

Records show two civil cases were closed without the now 45-year-old woman admitting wrongdoing. Nazfar Mirhadi and two firms linked to her handed over $97,500 to the province's Civil Forfeiture Office (CFO) in connection with one address in Abbotsford, B.C. Another property in Vancouver was sold, with more than $470,000 forfeited in court.

Operation Harrington

Operation Harrington in Canada later uncovered drug smuggling routes involving Venezuela's Margarita Island, long considered a training hub for the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. Wedding had used the "cultural" money-laundering network of an Iranian-Canadian co-defendant to move at least $100,000, according to evidence at trial.

All of it came to light in April 2015 when the Mounties announced charges against him and more than a dozen others, including drug trafficker Philipos Kollaros. By then, Wedding was moving up in Montreal's underworld.

 

An undercover police officer, identified in court only as "Joe" had infiltrated their crime ring by posing as a drug importer with access to smuggling ships.

Kollaros introduced Wedding to Joe as the "man in charge" and, in turn, Wedding openly described himself as a cocaine importer. They discussed in detail a plan to smuggle $25 million worth of cocaine using Joe's boat, through the Caribbean and onto Newfoundland. The cocaine would then be loaded onto trucks bound for Montreal.

Philipos Kollaros was gunned down in Montreal's Little Italy, months after pleading guilty to the conspiracy. Another target of the probe, Jahanbakhsh Meshkati, was shot dead in Burnaby, B.C., before charges could be filed. Both killings remain unsolved.

As for Wedding, the Mounties had a warrant for his arrest on charges of trafficking and conspiracy to import cocaine but he was already gone. Now 43, he's been on the run ever since.

Gurpreet Singh traveled to Dubai on behalf of Wedding, he was kidnapped in Sinaloa over a drug debt.

 

Kinahan Cartel Links

During a bail hearing last week for one of Wedding's key workers, Gurpreet Singh, the Kinahan Cartel were named in a document from federal prosecutors in Los Angeles and filed as evidence in Superior Court in Toronto. US officials told the court that Singh has "extensive organized crime connections within Dubai, including relationships with members of the Kinahan gang, which is a well-known, violent organized crime group operating throughout the world."

Singh is also accused to have been involved in a scheme to ship stolen high-end cars to Dubai through the port of Montreal. Singh was recorded discussing the arrangement at a meeting last year by the slain key FBI informant at an auto body shop in Ontario.

The same FBI informant flew to meet with Singh in the United Arab Emirates.

Just like the Kinahans, Wedding is said to have links to some of the world’s most infamous drugs cartels and terrorist organisations. They include ex-Russian KGB agents, Hezbollah and the Sinaloa Cartel. Wedding is said to have had connections to Iranian money launderers in Vancouver who have ties to Colombian cartels.

FBI Informant Killed

The FBI documents also detail how, in January 2024, a FBI informant met Wedding and Andrew Clark in Mexico City while wearing a wire. That witness, who had worked for Wedding for over a decade, met to arrange a cocaine shipment to Canada.

In recorded conversations, Clark allegedly explained that he sends 2 to 3,000 kilograms of cocaine each month to places in Canada, including about 600 kilograms a month to Alberta.

The Mexico meetings set in motion a plan to arrange shipments of more than 650 kilograms of cocaine from the Los Angeles area into Canada using a GTA-based transportation network allegedly run by Gurpreet Singh and his uncle, Hardeep Ratte.

Canadian media have also now reported that the FBI witness, Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, was a Canadian-Colombian man who has since been shot dead in a gangland hit in Colombia and will no longer be available to testify. The FBI's key witness was assassinated in a Medellin, Colombia restaurant on January 31, 2025.

Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, 42, was sharing a meal with two other people at Mi Arepa in a shopping center in the El Poblado sector when two individuals, armed with a handgun with a suppressor, approached from behind and opened fire hitting the victim in the head at least once.

Acevedo García had served a sentence in Canada for fentanyl trafficking and, after being released, he returned to Colombia. Acebedo-Garcia was born in Quebec to Colombian parents who owned a small cleaning business for which he worked for a time.

According to information from Quebec police forces, he was part of a criminal organization of Colombian origin that had been active and present in Montreal for more than 15 years.

Acebedo-Garcia and an accomplice were arrested in New York state in 2009 for a traffic violation and when police searched their vehicle, they discovered 23,000 MDMA (ecstasy) pills. The two men, who were returning from a visit to the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to traffic drugs and were sentenced to 51 months in prison. At trial, U.S. authorities revealed that a confidential police informant had tipped off the suspects and described their vehicle.

He was expected to testify that he met Wedding in 2011 while both were incarcerated at the same Texas prison, and that he communicated with Wedding using encrypted messages almost daily or weekly since around 2013. His role was to oversee the delivery of cocaine to couriers for transport to customers in Canada, and then launder the proceeds back to Wedding in Mexico.

Acebedo-Garcia was listed as a director of several companies registered in Quebec, including a bar located in the Ahuntsic district of Montreal, a gas station in Laval, a holding company and a vehicle detailing business.

He had agreed to work as a confidential informant for the FBI in exchange for favorable treatment over his role in the trafficking ring. The records explain that he was set to be identified prior to trial, and was expected to testify in person. But he was killed just over a month ago.

Sinaloa Cartel Drug Debt

Singh and a friend travelled to Culiacan, Sinaloa on July 29, 2024 to meet with a cartel leader to resolve a debt. On August 2, Singh "reported that they had been kidnapped and tied up and had been given until the end of the day to pay the $600,000 drug debt," according to prosecutors. 

Wedding took credit for negotiating Singh's release. Singh's wife collected roughly $400,000 toward a ransom payment to the Sinaloa Cartel, and obtained Wedding's assistance. 

In encrypted communications, Wedding said he would negotiate the release of Singh, who confirmed by August 7 that he had been freed.

2-Tons of Cocaine Seized

Authorities stated that according to their investigations, the defendants saw at least 1.8 tons of cocaine that passed through their network that was eventually seized.

"Wedding and his organization use Los Angeles as the primary hub for their narcotics operations. An estimated 60 metric tons of cocaine per year and five metric tons of fentanyl per month move through Los Angeles on its way to U.S. and Canadian cities. His criminal enterprise leveraged Los Angeles transportation corridors to distribute staggering quantities of illicit drugs devastated communities across the country," he said.

In a recorded conversation with Andrew Clark, Clark allegedly directed the FBI informant Acebedo-Garciato to offer the pair of Ontario-based truckers Hardeep Ratte and Gurpreet Singh a flat rate of between $175,000 and $225,000 per shipment; with each transporting up to 350 kilograms of cocaine.

In early April 2024, Ratte and Singh allegedly agreed to move a 375 kilo shipment that was later with the intercepted at a meetup of two couriers in Riverside, California. The seizure was the result information rom the FBI informant being provided.

Murders in Canada

Wedding is also wanted for allegedly ordering multiple murders in Ontario, Canada, and an attempted murder. U.S. authorities allege the group killed two members of a family in Canada in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment in what officials there said was a case of mistaken identity, as well as two other murders.

Wedding and Clark allegedly directed the November 20, 2023, murders of two members of a family in Ontario, Canada, in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment that passed through Southern California. But the shooter attacked the family of one of the other tenants.

"This was a case of mistaken identity," Estrada said. "They were killed in cold blood in front of their daughter, who was also shot 13 times."

The Sikh family was not connected to the trucking business and were renting the upper part of the house. The basement unit was also being rented out to a man who saw the gunmen flee in a black pickup truck.

Weeks prior to the shooting, Canadian police visited the part of the home the family was renting stating they were 'looking for someone' and went to verify who was living at the property.

Wedding and Clark allegedly also ordered the murder of another victim on May 18, 2024, over a drug debt. In addition, Clark and Malik Damion Cunningham, 23, a dual Canadian-American citizen, are charged with the April 1, 2024, murder of another victim in Ontario, Canada.

“The RCMP is committed to working with our international partners in the fight against transnational criminals,” said Liam Price, Director General, Royal Canadian Mounted Police International program. “It’s imperative that Ryan Wedding faces justice for the charges against him. We will continue to stand with and support our US and Mexican partners in this and other investigations to protect the public.”

Andrew Clark's Extradition

In June 2024, Wedding and his second-in-command Andrew Clark were charged in an indictment out of the Central District of California with running a continuing criminal enterprise; committing murder in connection with a continuing criminal enterprise and assorted drug crimes; and conspiring to possess, distribute, and export cocaine. 

In September 2024, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles returned a superseding indictment naming 14 additional defendants and including, among other counts, an attempted murder charge against Wedding and Clark.

Andrew Clark was among the 29 fugitives expelled from Mexico to the US last month.

Andrew Clark, "The Dictator," was arrested on October 8 by Mexican police in Plaza Andares in Zapopan, Jalisco. The arrest was made by the FGR with the Interpol Mexico division and support from the Mexican SEMAR Navy.

"The defendant, as described in the superseding indictment, played a key role in running a violent, international drug trafficking organization that was responsible for multiple murders," Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph T. McNally said in the statement. "We are grateful to have him in the United States where he will face justice."

Wedding and Clark allegedly also ordered the murder of another victim on May 18, 2024, over a drug debt. In addition, Clark and Malik Damion Cunningham, 23, a dual Canadian-American citizen, are charged with the April 1, 2024, murder of another victim in Ontario, Canada.

Part Two will tell the story of the young Canadian hitman who was trained in Mexico

Sources FBI, FBI, CBC, CBC, Toronto Star, Borderland Beat, Sunday World, Sunday World, La Presse

Categories: Canada, extradition, ryan james wedding, sinaloa cartel