U.S. authorities have filed new charges against Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian Olympian turned alleged drug kingpin, including murder and witness tampering. The indictment, announced on November 19, 2025, reveals a plot to kill a cooperating witness and details Wedding's vast cocaine trafficking network. Despite raids and arrests, Wedding remains at large, with law enforcement believing he is in central Mexico.
Ryan Wedding, once a promising athlete who placed 24th in the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics, has evaded capture for years after transforming into a major figure in North American drug trafficking. According to a federal indictment unsealed in October 2024, Wedding allegedly moved 60 tons of cocaine annually from Colombia through Mexico to Canada and the U.S., generating about $1 billion in revenue. He built connections with groups like the Sinaloa Cartel, Russian and Iranian organized crime, the Montreal mob, and the Wolfpack Alliance of biker gangs.
Wedding's path took a dark turn after his 2008 arrest in San Diego for cocaine trafficking, followed by time in Reeves County Detention Complex in Texas, where he met Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia in 2011. Both released by 2013, they stayed in touch. By early 2023, the FBI targeted Wedding, and Acebedo-Garcia began cooperating in late 2023, providing details on shipments like a January 2024 meeting in Mexico City to arrange 2,000-3,000 kilos monthly into Canada.
Surveillance captured Wedding at a Starbucks that month—his first confirmed sighting in nearly a decade. Shipments followed, but seizures mounted: 293 kilos monitored in San Bernardino on March 4, 2024; 375 kilos near Riverside in April; 124 kilos at the Blue Water Bridge in August; and 521 kilos near Hazen, Arkansas, in October. Suspecting betrayal, Wedding plotted Acebedo-Garcia's murder, enlisting associates like Andrew Clark, lawyer Deepak Paradkar, enforcer Atna Ohna, and madam Carmen Yelinet Valoyes Florez.
On January 31, 2025, hitmen shot Acebedo-Garcia five times in the head at El Indio restaurant in Medellín, Colombia. Wedding paid $500,000 to the crew and $300,000 to Ohna. On November 19, 2025, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced nine new charges against Wedding, including murder, plus arrests of 12 associates and a reward increase to $15 million. Mexican police raided four of his properties on December 24, seizing $40 million in motorcycles, drugs, and two Olympic medals.
Former FBI agent Brett Kalina, who arrested Wedding in 2008, told Rolling Stone: “They clearly have someone very close to him [cooperating]... it’s just a matter of time before they can get him out of there.” As of January 2026, Wedding remains fugitive, with rumored sightings in Mexico City and a new FBI photo showing him shirtless with a lion tattoo.
