FBI Director Kash Patel described Canadian former snowboarder Ryan Wedding as a ‘modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar’.
The United States State Department has raised its reward for information leading to the arrest of a former Olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug kingpin, as Canadian authorities announced seven people linked to the fugitive have been arrested.
Speaking at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday, FBI Director Kash Patel described Ryan Wedding as a “modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar” – referring to the notorious Colombian drug lord who died in 1993.
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The 44-year-old, who is on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list, is believed to be hiding out in Mexico. Patel said the reward for information leading to Wedding’s arrest now stands at $15m, rising from $10m.
“[Wedding] is responsible for engineering a narco-trafficking and narco-terrorism programme that we have not seen in a long time,” Patel said.
Wedding, who was indicted in 2024 for conspiracy to distribute and possess cocaine, conspiracy to export cocaine and conspiracy to commit murder, is “extremely dangerous”, said FBI agent Akil Davis.
Davis added that Wedding, who represented Canada in snowboarding at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, finishing 24th in the parallel giant slalom, is “extremely violent” and “extremely wealthy”.
At Wednesday’s news conference, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wedding is Canada’s largest cocaine distributor and is behind the trafficking of $1bn worth of drugs each year.
Bondi said Wedding works closely with Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, transporting about 60 metric tonnes of cocaine annually into Los Angeles in trucks across the southern border.
“We will find you, and you will be accountable and held to justice for your crimes,” Bondi said.
“It’s [drugs] killing our kids. It’s killing our friends. It’s killing our relatives. And this guy is responsible for a tremendous amount of that horror,” she added.
On Tuesday, Canadian officials arrested seven people in connection with Wedding’s cocaine-smuggling operation, including his lawyer Deepak Paradkar, as part of a coordinated interagency effort by Canada and the US dubbed “Operation Giant Slalom”.
Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli said the 62-year-old lawyer advised Wedding that if he killed a witness in a pending criminal case, “the case would be dismissed”.
The witness in question was then murdered after being shot five times in the head in January 2025 at a restaurant in Medellin, Colombia.
“Wedding placed a bounty on the victim’s head in the erroneous belief that the victim’s death would result in the dismissal of criminal charges against him and his international drug-trafficking ring and would further ensure that he was not extradited to the United States,” Essayli said.
“He was wrong,” he added.
Bondi said US authorities are offering a $2m reward for information leading to the arrest of those involved in the Medellin killing.
A second man arrested this week by Canadian authorities, named Gursewak Singh Bal, is the founder of a fake news website known as The Dirty News.
Bal was allegedly paid to post a photograph of the witness and his wife on his website prior to the murder so they could be “located and killed”, according to the Justice Department.
US authorities are now seeking the extradition of all seven people arrested in Canada, while three others linked to the Medellin murder were taken into custody in the US.
Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Michael Duheme, said Wedding remains “one of the top threats to Canadian public safety”.
As part of Operation Giant Slalom, the Treasury Department also announced that its Office of Foreign Asset Control is imposing financial sanctions on Wedding and his network.
