Ryan Wedding allegedly ran a drug-trafficking organisation that moved 60 tons of cocaine a year into Los Angeles
Ryan Wedding, the Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug kingpin, has been arrested, US law enforcement officials announced on Friday.
Wedding, 44, has been sought by the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) for his role in overseeing what the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, called the “one of the most prolific and violent drug-trafficking organizations” in the world.
Officials in the US allege that Wedding’s organisation had moved nearly 60 metric tons of cocaine a year into Los Angeles from Mexico using a network of semitrucks. Wedding is also accused of ordering the killing of a key FBI witness as well as several other murders, including that of a couple who were killed in a case of mistaken identity.
US authorities had previously said that they believed Wedding to be in hiding in Mexico. On Thursday, the FBI director, Kash Patel, was in Mexico City for meetings with the country’s security chief, Omar García Harfuch. And on Friday morning he left with a souvenir: Ryan Wedding, and another, unnamed, “priority objective”.
