LOS ANGELES — A $10 million reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder accused of leading a vast international drug trafficking operation and ordering multiple murders connected to it.
The FBI added 43-year-old Ryan Wedding to its most wanted list on Thursday, coinciding with the U.S. State Department’s announcement of the $10 million reward.
Akil Davis, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, stated that Wedding allegedly transitioned from Olympic snowboarding to distributing cocaine across the U.S. and Canada. Davis added that Wedding is considered extremely dangerous due to the alleged murders of his rivals.
The FBI notes that Wedding also goes by the aliases “El Jefe,” “Public Enemy,” and “James Conrad King.”
Wedding was initially charged with murder and drug-related offenses last June. These charges were expanded in September with an indictment alleging that Wedding and his associates orchestrated the annual shipment of approximately 60 tons of cocaine between Colombia, Mexico, Southern California, and Canada using semi-trucks.
The FBI announced in October that a dozen individuals had been apprehended in connection with the case.
U.S. authorities claim the group murdered two members of a Canadian family in a case of mistaken identity as retribution for a drug shipment theft, as well as two other individuals, according to officials and court documents.
Wedding placed 24th in the parallel giant slalom event at the 2002 Olympics.
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