Ryan Wedding arrested after manhunt for ex-Olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug kingpin, officials say
Former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding, an alleged drug kingpin who's been accused of orchestrating multiple murders, has been arrested, Justice Department officials announced Friday.
Wedding, a 44-year-old Canadian national, was taken into custody in Mexico City on Thursday night, FBI Director Kash Patel said at a news conference at a Southern California airport. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a social media post that Wedding has been flown to the U.S.
Patel told reporters he was in Mexico on a previously planned trip. He said the Mexican government worked with the U.S. to apprehend Wedding.
"This was a great operation that came together through interagency success," Patel said.
Wedding has been accused of running a major drug trafficking network that moved cocaine from Colombia through Mexico to the U.S. and Canada. Patel said in a social media post Friday that Wedding was running his alleged operation as a member of the notorious Sinaloa Cartel and that Wedding believed to have been hiding out in Mexico for over a decade.
Wedding was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list last year.
In November, Wedding was accused of placing a "multimillion-dollar bounty" on a federal witness who was involved in a narcotics case against him.
According to the FBI, Wedding and his second-in-command Andrew Clark, 34, allegedly also ordered the killings of two members of a Canadian family in 2023 in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment.
Clark was extradited to the U.S. from Mexico last year.
The pair are also accused of directing the killing of another person in 2024 over a drug debt, according to the FBI.