Accused murderer, cocaine trafficker and former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding has been arrested and is now in custody on his way from Mexico to the United States, the FBI has confirmed.
NBC was the first to report the arrest, which took place in Mexico City on Thursday night. The indictment was filed by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.
The 44-year-old Canadian had been wanted by the FBI for an alleged transnational drug ring that brings around 60 metric tons of cocaine into Southern California annually, Attorney General Pam Bondi has claimed. He’ll stand before a judge on Monday, FBI Los Angeles Field Office assistant director Akil Davis told reporters Friday.
Wedding was allegedly under the protection Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel for the better part of the last decade and was compared by FBI director Kash Patel to that group’s imprisoned former leader, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.
The fugitive was charged with eight felonies, including three counts of murder and one count of attempt to commit murder back in 2024. Then in November of 2025, a grand jury indictment against Wedding was unsealed, charging him with the death of a federal witness who was supposed to testify against the former snowboarder. That witness was shot and killed at a restaurant in Medellín, Colombia after Wedding ‘placed a bounty’ on his head with the help of a Canadian website, according to authorities.
The FBI recently upped its reward for information on Wedding to $15 million after the snowboarder spent close to a decade on the run. It is unclear if that money will be awarded to anyone. Likewise, details about Wedding’s apprehension have not yet been revealed and Patel declined to go into further detail, Friday, saying he wanted to ‘safeguard’ the investigation.
Patel took the opportunity to credit President Donald Trump for Wedding’s arrest.
‘Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and commitment to global law enforcement – as of this morning, the DOJ/FBI officially apprehended our SIXTH Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitive within the last year,’ Patel wrote on X. ‘Thank you to @AGPamBondi for her relentless pursuit of justice, the US Attorney’s Office in L.A., and FBI Los Angeles.’
Patel also thanked Mexico for its cooperation in taking down Wedding.
‘This operation is the result of tremendous cooperation and team work (sic) with the Government of Mexico,’ Patel wrote on X. ‘Special thanks to our amazing partners in Mexico who facilitated this – President Sheinbaum, Secretary Harfuch, Ambassador Ron Johnson, Legat Mexico, and more. Our federal partners @TheJusticeDept @StateDept and more were also instrumental in this. Our HRT, CIRG, and aviation units did outstanding work.’
In Friday’s press conference, Patel credited US Ambassador to Mexico Ronald D. Johnson for ‘quarterbacking’ this case over the last year.
Likewise, Bondi thanked Patel online for his contributions to the arrest: ‘Director Patel has worked tirelessly to bring fugitives to justice. We are grateful to our incredible Ambassador Ron Johnson and the Mexican authorities for assisting us in this case.’
The FBI’s pursuit of Wedding had been gathering momentum for some time.
A month ago, the FBI released never-before-seen photos of a $40 million seizure of motorbikes believed to be owned by Wedding. Among the items seized were 62 motorbikes.
Alongside the images, a statement from the FBI read: ‘This month, Mexican authorities executed multiple search warrants and seized a large number of motorcycles with an estimated value of approximately $40 million USD believed to be owned by FBI’s Top Ten Fugitive Ryan James Wedding.
‘This successful seizure is a result of collaborative efforts among Mexican authorities, the FBI, @RCMP and @LAPDHQ.’
While not verified, speculation on social media claimed that some of the motorbikes have a famous history, potentially even being ridden by Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez in MotoGP.
Also in the recent haul, FBI agents found two vehicles, two Olympic medals, methamphetamine, marijuana, works of art, and ammunition.
It is not clear who the medals belong to, given Wedding finished 24th in the parallel giant slalom at his sole Olympic Games in Salt Lake City.
The US Treasury Department recently claimed Wedding has built a ‘complex web’ of assets to hide his wealth, using luxury cars, motorcycles, properties, cryptocurrency and front businesses.’
In November, Patel said Wedding was responsible for ‘engineering a narco trafficking and narco terrorism program that we have not seen in a long time.’
Bondi has said that the drug kingpin ‘controls one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in the world.’
The authorities have also said there was ‘some evidence’ Wedding had undergone cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance and further evade detection.
Earlier this month, the FBI added an alleged Wedding accomplice, Bianca Canastillo-Madrid, to its ‘Wanted’ list. She was subject of a federal arrest warrant after being charged with conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine, conspiracy to export cocaine and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments.
A native of Thunder Bay, Ontario, Wedding became a competitive snowboarder as a teenager before going on to compete at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, where he finished 24th in the men’s parallel giant slalom.
Afterwards he got into bodybuilding, real estate speculation and allegedly began growing marijuana at a 6,800-plant warehouse that was later raided by the RCMP.
However, Wedding was not at the property at the time and evaded prosecution due to a lack of evidence.
He’s further accused of partnering with Iranian and Russian cocaine smugglers and in 2010, was convicted of trying to buy the drug from an undercover U.S. government agent. He was sentenced to four years in prison and released in 2011.
Wedding was charged as part of the US government’s Operation Giant Slalom in 2024 with leading an alleged cocaine trafficking cartel and murder.
Along with his alleged accomplice Andrew Clark, Wedding is alleged to have ordered the murders of married couple Jagtar Sidhu, 57, and Harbhajan Sidhu, 55, in November of 2023 as well as 39-year-old Mohammed Zafar in May of 2024 and a federal witness in Colombia in January of 2025.
The Sidhus were believed to have been killed over a stolen shipment of drugs, although Ontario Provincial Police Detective-Inspector Brian McDermott said in 2024 the assassins ‘shot the wrong people.’
Their daughter, Jaspreet Kaur Sidhu, 28, was also shot 13 times in the attack, but survived.
‘My father was shot in front of me,’ she told CBS News in 2024. ‘I heard my mother’s last screams. After that, there was complete silence. Only the noises of gunshots.’
