He once carved his name into Canada’s Olympic snowboarding history, slaloming down mountains and shredding fresh powder on the world stage.
Now, Ryan James Wedding’s name is etched on a different list – the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted – accused of trafficking another kind of white powder.
In September 2024, the 43-year-old was among 16 people charged in Operation Giant Slalom, accused of running a billion-dollar cocaine smuggling network spanning from Colombia, through Mexico, and into the US and Canada.
Prosecutors say Wedding – who is otherwise known as ‘El Jefe’ and ‘Public Enemy’ – is the alleged leader of the network and has orchestrated multiple drug-related murders, showing a ‘callous disregard’ for human life.
He is believed to be hiding in central Mexico, using cartel connections to stay beyond the reach of federal authorities.
The FBI said last week there is ‘some evidence’ Wedding may have recently undergone cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance and further evade detection – but any likeness to the clean-cut Olympian he once was vanished long before he went under the knife.
Ryan Wedding competed for Canada in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City
In March, Wedding was added to the FBI’s list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. He was last spotted in 2024 (above), but is believed to have undergone plastic surgery
Wedding has been on the run since at least 2015, when he was named in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s (RCMP) two-year Operation Harrington, which uncovered schemes to import cocaine into Canada and resulted in charges against more than a dozen suspects.
Case files show Wedding – then living in Montreal – introduced himself to an undercover agent as a cocaine importer and discussed shipments of up to 2,205lbs by boat from the Caribbean to Newfoundland.
The deal was called off, but three months later, the French Navy seized 467lbs of the drug near Antigua, triggering raids across Canada and 15 arrests. According to the RCMP, the group had planned to move 15 tons of cocaine.
Wedding faced five charges and an arrest warrant was issued; however, he is believed to have fled Canada before police could snare him.
Harrington files cast him as a senior partner in the operation, overseeing encrypted deals under multiple code names, though the precise scope of his role remains unclear.
He has been considered a fugitive of justice ever since.
Then came the DOJ indictment last fall, alleging that Wedding and his supposed right-hand man, fellow Canadian Andrew Clark, led the billion-dollar ring while living in Mexico.
Investigators have publicly linked the pair to four killings in Ontario but have hinted at more orchestrated hits across North America.
The former snowboarder is accused of running a billion-dollar cocaine smuggling operation, trafficking the drug from Columbia to North America
The FBI is offering up to $10million for information that leads to his arrest
Prosecutors say the pair ordered the November 2023 killing of Jagtar Singh, 57, and Harbhajan Kaur, 55 – a mistaken-identity hit on a visiting couple from India.
Their daughter, who was shot 13 times but miraculously survived, recalled: ‘I heard my mother’s last screams. After that, there was complete silence. Only the noises of gunshots.’
Then, in April 2024, Clark allegedly sent a hit list to a gunman known as ‘Mr. Perfect’ – ‘Blow this guy’s top off,’ he wrote, offering $100,000.
Soon after, 29-year-old Randy Fader was shot dead in his Niagara driveway.
Mr. Perfect was arrested in Toronto two weeks later with 9mm rounds and a white iPhone showing encrypted chats with Clark and additional targets.
Clark, 34, was arrested in Guadalajara in October 2024 and now awaits trial in California with several co-defendants.
Wedding and a handful of his alleged cronies remain on the run.
He has been charged with eight felonies, including three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.
Authorities believe Wedding is living in Mexico, under the protection of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel.
US authorities are offering $10million for information leading to his arrest.
FBI spokesperson Laura Eimiller told the Toronto Star on Sunday that investigators believe Wedding may have recently had cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance.
‘There is some evidence that he may have undergone plastic surgery… so we urge the public to be flexible when considering his appearance,’ Eimiller said.
The FBI has not revealed what modifications they believe Wedding has undergone.
The FBI has not revealed what cosmetic modifications Wedding has undergone, nor what their evidence entails
Wedding’s group is accused of committing ‘unremitting, callous and greed-driven crimes’
The last confirmed sighting of Wedding was captured by the FBI in 2024. A photograph from the sighting, first shared publicly in March, shows the hulking, six-foot-three, 240-pound disgraced athlete with short hair and a mustache, wearing a blue LA Dodgers cap and a $1,300 Louis Vuitton T-shirt.
Eimiller said that Wedding has been ‘sophisticated’ in his ability to evade authorities.
The 2024 sighting contrasts sharply with a photo the FBI released of Wedding’s driver’s license a decade earlier, showing him with a bushy brown beard, long curly hair, and a receding hairline.
The hunt has involved agencies across the US, Canada, Mexico and Colombia, with Interpol support. Authorities have seized nearly two tons of cocaine and more than $3.2 million in cryptocurrency.
Prosecutors have alleged that Wedding is still actively trafficking drugs from the shadows, claiming in March 2025 that his network was flooding North America with five tons of fentanyl a month.
Authorities warned he has access to ‘a network of hitmen’, ready to do his bidding at a moment’s notice, meaning anyone who crosses him could be in danger.
One such adversary was Montreal-born Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, who had recently become a key witness in the investigation into the Wedding web, but was assassinated in Medellin, Colombia, on January 31.
As The Star first reported, Garcia met Wedding in prison in 2011 while they were both serving time for drug-related offenses.
They worked together for more than a decade before Garcia turned on Wedding in 2023, agreeing to help authorities dismantle his criminal operation.
Many of Wedding’s alleged associates have been arrested as part of Operation Giant Slalom
A seizure connected to Operation Giant Slalom, released by Drug Enforcement Administration
Wedding’s fall from the Olympic slopes into the darkest depths of the criminal underworld has been a dizzying downhill run, leaving those who were once closest to him unable to see where – or why – he veered off course.
He was born into a family of skiers in Thunder Bay, Ontario, a working-class city on Lake Superior. His father was a competitive skier, his uncle had represented Canada, and his grandparents ran a grassroots ski club.
Most of Wedding’s time was spent out on the slopes before he could even read. Going to the Olympics felt like a surefire destiny, childhood friends told Rolling Stone in 2009.
‘He had no fear,’ said Bobby Allison, former national champion ski racer. ‘A lot of kids, they say they want to go fast, but they don’t really want to go fast. They hold something back, because there’s a little bit of fear there of falling. Ryan had none of that.’
Wedding eventually traded his ski poles for a snowboard and won the first race he ever entered at the age of 12.
Three years later, Wedding was selected to join the Canadian national team and began competing all over the world.
Then, at the age of 20, Wedding got his first taste of stardom when he qualified to compete at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.
He finished in a disappointing 24th place in the parallel giant slalom – but his future looked bright.
Friends say it was shortly after enrolling at Simon Fraser University near Vancouver that Wedding’s shine started to dim.
He told his father he had plans to reinvent himself as a stockbroker or engineer, but as his sporting career faded, his hunger for glory was replaced by a growing taste for wealth, status, and risky pursuits.
The ex-snowboarder was part of the Canadian team at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake
In the early 2000s, Vancouver was home to the most profitable marijuana trade in North America. It was also a hotbed for gang activity, with rival dealers gunning each other down in the streets and in nightclubs as they tussled over turf and fought to corner the market.
Wedding took up a job as a bouncer at a nightclub and began brushing shoulders with gangsters and attending cocaine-fueled parties.
After two years, he decided to drop out of college and told his father he was interested in real estate. Wedding borrowed $250,000 from his father to buy a home that he flipped for a six-figure profit.
Wedding spent the money on a new condo in the Vancouver area and filled its garage with a Hummer, a Ducati, a BMW, and snowmobiles.
Friends were suspicious about Wedding’s suddenly lavish spending, but he would shrug off their concerns, assuring them his real estate ventures were booming.
Police, too, grew suspicious and, in 2004, started investigating him, believing Wedding was running a marijuana-growing operation on a friend’s farm. It was said they were making so much money they were hauling out trash bags full of cash.
In the summer of 2006, police raided the grow-op and discovered loaded guns in a locked safe, 6,800 marijuana plants, and 86 pounds of dried weed.
The total haul was estimated to be worth $10million. However, with no conclusive evidence linking Wedding to the operation, he was never charged.
Authorities believe Wedding is still pulling the strings of his operation from the shadows
The Sinaloa cartel is believed to be harboring Wedding (file photo)
Two years later, Wedding wouldn’t be so lucky. After losing nearly $1million in a botched cocaine deal and a failed real estate scheme, he travelled to California looking for a score.
There, he brokered a deal to move 53lbs of cocaine. However, it was a sting and he was arrested and later convicted of conspiracy to distribute drugs, which carried a minimum sentence of 10 years.
Wedding – who cut an imposing figure behind bars – successfully negotiated a lesser sentence of 48 months after appealing to the judge: ‘As an athlete, I was always taught that there are no second chances, and well, I’m here asking for exactly that.’
It was during his time serving that sentence that Wedding first met Clark, also imprisoned for drug offenses, and many other minor players in the Mexican drug market.
One former FBI agent told Rolling Stone: ‘We really did just turn him into a much better drug dealer than he ever was.’
Upon his release, police said in 2024 that Wedding allegedly went back to trafficking and built his ‘prolific and ruthless organization.’
How long he can stay hidden remains an open question.
In the meantime, all his family can do is wonder what happened to the promising young athlete they once knew.
‘You can have every opportunity and still take the wrong path,’ his mom said in 2009. ‘But it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.’
Sixteen years later, the FBI disagrees.
‘Wedding went from shredding powder on the slopes at the Olympics to distributing powder cocaine on the streets,’ Assistant Director of the FBI’s LA Field Office, Akil Davis, said in March 2025.
‘The alleged murders of his competitors make Wedding a very dangerous man.’
