FILE - An image of former ɫtv Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding, who is a fugitive and been charged with allegedly running and participating in a transnational drug trafficking operation, is displayed on a video monitor along with bricks of cocaine, foreground, during a news conference at the FBI offices in Los Angeles, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)
FILE - An FBI seal is displayed on a podium before a news conference at the field office in Portland, Ore., Jan. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)
Jenny Kane
FILE - An image of former ɫtv Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding, who is a fugitive and been charged with allegedly running and participating in a transnational drug trafficking operation, is displayed on a video monitor along with bricks of cocaine, foreground, during a news conference at the FBI offices in Los Angeles, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Ryan Wedding, a former Olympic snowboarder from Canada who was among the FBI’s top fugitives and faces charges related to multinational drug trafficking and the killing of a federal witness, has been arrested in Mexico, top Justice Department officials said Friday.
Wedding, 44, is accused of running a drug trafficking operation, and officials say he orchestrated several killings to further the drug crimes. He was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and authorities had offered a $15 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed Wedding's arrest in social media posts. Patel said Wedding was being transported to the U.S. after being apprehended Thursday night in Mexico, where U.S. authorities believe the former Olympian been hiding for more than a decade.
“This is a huge day for a safer North America, and the world,” Patel wrote on the social platform X, “and a message that those who break our laws and harm our citizens will be brought to justice.”
Patel was expected to hold a news conference later Friday in California.
Patel held meetings in Mexico on Thursday and left Friday with two detainees, Mexico's Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch wrote on X. He said the two detainees were a ɫtv citizen who turned himself in at the U.S. embassy, as well as someone else who was among the FBI’s most-wanted and had been detained by Mexican authorities.
A member of Mexico’s Security Cabinet, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, told The Associated Press that Wedding was the ɫtv citizen who turned himself in.
Wedding competed for his home country in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Olympic records show he participated in a single men's snowboarding event, parallel giant slalom, finishing 24th.
Wedding was charged in 2024 with running a drug ring that used semitrucks to move cocaine between Colombia, Mexico, Southern California and Canada. Authorities said his aliases included “El Jefe,” “Public Enemy” and “James Conrad Kin.”
In November, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that he had also been indicted on charges of orchestrating the killing of a witness in Colombia to help him avoid extradition to the U.S.
Authorities said Wedding and co-conspirators used a ɫtv website called “The Dirty News” to post a photograph of the witness so he could be identified and killed. The witness was then followed to a restaurant in Medellín in January and shot in the head.
Wedding faces separate drug trafficking charges in Canada that date back to 2015, according to the Royal ɫtv Mounted Police.
Wedding was previously convicted in the U.S. of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and was sentenced to prison in 2010, federal records show. Federal prosecutors in 2024 said they believed Wedding, after his release from prison, had resumed drug trafficking under the protection of the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.
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Associated Press journalist Fabiola Sánchez in Mexico City contributed to this story.
