Canadian ex-Olympian pleads not guilty to 17 felonies including drug trafficking | US crime
Ryan Wedding, the former Canadian Olympic snowboarder accused of distributing cocaine and orchestrating multiple murders, was arraigned in a Southern California courtroom on Monday.
The 44-year-old man is accused of drug trafficking, conspiracy to murder, witness tampering and money laundering, among other charges. Authorities allege that after his snowboarding career, Wedding “turned to a life of crime” as a narcotics trafficker and led an organization that transported cocaine from South America to the United States and Canada.
He is also accused of directing the “drug-related” murders of two members of a family in Ontario in 2023, the 2024 murder of another victim over a drug debt in Canada, and the murder of an associate and FBI witness in Colombia in January 2025.
Wedding, who appeared in court for the first time in Santa Ana on Monday, pleaded not guilty to 17 serious charges in two indictments. He remains jailed without bail under orders from US magistrate judge John D Early.
A reward of up to $15 million would be offered for information leading to his arrest. Mexican authorities announced that Wedding, who was wanted by the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), was detained last week after reportedly surrendering at the US embassy in Mexico.
However, Wedding’s lawyer, Anthony Colombo, told reporters after the hearing that his client did not surrender and was arrested. CBC reported.
“The indictments are not evidence, just an accusation,” he said, adding that Wedding was “in a good mood” and “mentally challenged,” according to the press.
Wedding allegedly worked with the Sinaloa cartel and ran an illegal drug operation that generated more than $1 billion a year. His alleged enterprise was said to be Canada’s largest supplier of cocaine, according to a separate indictment filed in 2024 from his home country.
FBI director Kash Patel compared Wedding to Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Pablo Escobar and described him as “the greatest drug trafficker of modern times” at a news conference Friday.
“This individual, his organization, and the Sinaloa Cartel have put drugs on the streets of North America, killed scores of our young people, and corrupted scores of our citizens,” Patel said. “This ends today.”
U.S. officials have said the Wedding operation smuggled about 60 tons of cocaine a year, but that figure is not included in the indictment and security experts have expressed skepticism about comparisons to El Chapo.
“There are no signs [Wedding] “He controls the territory, he is neither the head of an armed militia nor is he a politically significant player,” Stephen Woodman, a security analyst in Guadalajara, Mexico, told the Guardian last week.
According to the statement made by the US prosecutor’s office for the central district of California, the next hearing date of the case is February 11. His trial is scheduled to begin on March 24.
Associated Press contributed reporting
