Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder who became one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives, was taken into custody in Mexico and transported toward the United States. He faces charges tied to a multinational cocaine network and the alleged killing of a federal witness.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the arrest. Patel said Wedding was apprehended on the event date after hiding in Mexico for more than a decade. At a California news conference the following morning, he credited cooperation with Mexican authorities and other international partners.
Mexico’s Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch said Patel left the country with two detainees after meetings there. One was a Canadian citizen who surrendered at the U.S. Embassy; the other was a person detained by Mexican authorities from the FBI’s wanted list. An unnamed Mexican Security Cabinet member told the Associated Press that Wedding was the Canadian who turned himself in.
That account adds nuance to the word “arrest”: U.S. officials announced that Wedding had been apprehended, while the Mexican source said he surrendered at the embassy. Both descriptions place him in custody and being transferred to the United States, but the supplied report does not reconcile the exact circumstances.
Wedding, 44, was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Authorities had offered $15 million for information leading to his arrest and conviction. Prosecutors accuse him of running a trafficking organization that moved cocaine by semitruck from Colombia through Mexico and Southern California into Canada.
A 2024 indictment identified aliases including “El Jefe,” “Public Enemy” and “James Conrad Kin.” U.S. authorities said Wedding orchestrated killings to advance the drug operation and later charged him with arranging the murder of a witness in Colombia to prevent extradition.
According to prosecutors, conspirators posted a photograph of that witness on a Canadian website so the person could be located. The witness was followed to a restaurant in Medellín and shot in January. These are allegations contained in criminal charges; they have not been established at trial.
Wedding also faces Canadian trafficking charges dating to 2015, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said. U.S. records show he was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and sentenced to prison in 2010. Prosecutors later alleged that he resumed trafficking after release while protected by the Sinaloa Cartel.
Before the criminal cases, Wedding represented Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. He finished 24th in the men’s parallel giant slalom, his only Olympic event.
His arrival in U.S. custody moves a long-running fugitive hunt into the court system. Prosecutors will still have to prove the current trafficking and murder-related accusations, while the conflicting descriptions of his capture may receive further clarification in official filings.
