Authorities are searching for a former Canadian Olympic Snowboarder accused of moving roughly 60 tons of cocaine a year and orchestrating execution-style murders. Ryan Wedding, 43, is on the lam after being charged with allegedly operating a multibillion-dollar drug trafficking organized crime group that moved massive amounts of drugs into the U.S. and Canada.
“Instead of using the privileges that come with being an Olympic athlete to do good for people, he did the opposite,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said at a press conference, surrounded by stacked bricks of confiscated drugs. “He chose to become a major drug trafficker, and he chose to become a killer.”
Wedding competed in the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. He placed 24th in the men’s parallel giant slalom racing event. When snowboarding didn’t work out for him, he turned to crime. In 2010, Wedding was sentenced to 4 years in prison for drug trafficking.
Those previous charges pale in comparison to the ones leveled against him on October 17 by the U.S. Justice Department. The sprawling indictment includes multiple felonies, including drug trafficking, leading a criminal organization, three counts of murder, and one attempt to commit murder.
At this time, he is a fugitive from justice. As the avalanche of evidence against him continues mounting, the FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information that leads to his arrest
Ryan Wedding: Olympic Snowboarder, Drug Trafficking Kingpin
Wedding is a native of Thunder Bay, Ontario. Not much exists about his personal life online before his Olympic appearance and subsequent drug charges. It’s noted on his Olympedia.org athlete profile that in 2006, he was named in a search warrant and investigated for growing large quantities of marijuana.
His Olympic biography photo shows a clean-cut and beardless face. However, the booking photo from his previous arrest shows a scraggly, bearded, and long-haired Wedding. According to police, he is believed to be living in Mexico at this time.
Along with Wedding, Andrew Clark, 34, was also named in the indictment and was arrested on Oct. 8. In one example of Wedding and Clark’s crimes, Estrada describes two Indian tourists who were killed mistakenly by the two criminals. They believed that the couple was responsible for a lost shipment of cocaine.
“All of these victims were intentionally shot execution-style so their loved ones could see them murdered,” Estrada disclosed at the press event.
The indictment names 14 co-defendants to Wedding and Clark, 12 of whom (including Clark) are already in police custody as of this writing.
