An ex-Olympian is on the run after federal prosecutors charged him for a sweeping, “transnational drug trafficking” scheme.
As NBC News reports, Canadian former snowboarder Ryan James Wedding is one of 16 people federal prosecutors named in an Oct. 17 superseding indictment. It alleges that Wedding and his co-conspirators “routinely shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine”—60 tons per year, according to The Washington Post, through Mexico to Southern California and up into Canada—and “orchestrated multiple murders in furtherance of these drug crimes.”
“Instead of using the privileges that come with being an Olympic athlete to do good for people, he did the opposite,” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada at a briefing on the indictment. “He chose to become a major drug trafficker, and he chose to become a killer.”
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Operating under the nicknames “El Jefe,” “Public Enemy,” and “Giant,” Wedding now faces eight counts relating to the export and distribution of a controlled substance, as well as several killings. The indictment alleges that Wedding and his co-conspirator Andrew Clark (“The Dictator”) ordered the retaliatory shooting of two people in Ontario, and the murder of another person who allegedly owed them a “drug debt.”
“Anyone who got in their way, they would target for violence—including murder," Estrada said, alleging that enemies of the “extremely prolific and ruthless” operation were dispatched “execution-style.”
The “Olympic athlete-turned-drug lord,” as prosecutors call him in the indictment, competed at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. He came in 24th in the men’s parallel giant slalom. As his Olympics.com profile notes, he was convicted of attempting to buy cocaine from a government agent in 2010 and received a prison sentence in the U.S. After that, he relocated to Mexico.
In building the case against the billion-dollar “Wedding Drug Trafficking Organization,” investigators seized “more than one ton of cocaine, three firearms, dozens of rounds of ammunition, $255,400 in United States currency, and more than $3.2 million in cryptocurrency,” prosecutors say.
Wedding is currently on the run, with the FBI offering as much as $50,000 for anyone with information that leads to his arrest.
