Ryan Wedding: Ex-Olympic Snowboarder Becomes Most Wanted Drug Kingpin, FBI Offers $15M as a Reward

Ex-Olympic snowboarder Ryan James Wedding is a Canadian citizen, residing in Mexico. The 44-year-old athlete has been alleged to be a part of a sprawling global drug trafficking ring. On Wednesday, November 19, US Attorney General Pam Bondi stated that the ex-omplyian has been accused of orchestrating the murder of a federal witness in Colombia to prevent testimony linking him to an international drug operation. The witness was shot dead earlier in the year on January 31, 2025.

On November 20, 2025, Ryan Wedding tops the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s ten most wanted list. The US is offering a $15 million bounty for his capture. After retiring from sports, Ryan Wedding is speculated to have been associated with a transnational drug trafficking network and orchestrated multiple murders. FBI Director Kash Patel revealed in a news conference held in Washington that Ryan Wedding is a “modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar”, referring to the notorious Colombian drug lord who died in 1993. Take a closer look!

Who Is Ryan Wedding? Most Wanted Alleged Drug Kingpin

The US Department of State offers a reward of up to $15 million for info leading to the arrest &/or conviction of #FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive Ryan James Wedding, wanted for allegedly running & participating in a transnational drug trafficking operation: https://t.co/YyLpIU4Nmi pic.twitter.com/3DdiopiL9W — FBI Most Wanted (@FBIMostWanted) November 19, 2025

The FBI officials stated that Ryan ran a drug trafficking network that routinely moved hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and Southern California to other parts of the U.S. and Canada. Patel said, “He is responsible for engineering a narco-trafficking and narco-terrorism programme that we have not seen in a long time. The reward for information leading to Wedding’s arrest now stands at $15m, rising from $10m.” 

Additionally, Attorney General Pam Bondi asserted that Wedding is Canada’s largest cocaine distributor and is behind the trafficking of $1 billion worth of drugs each year. He is closely tied to Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, transporting about 60 metric tonnes of cocaine annually into Los Angeles in trucks across the southern border. 

On Tuesday, Canadian authorities arrested seven people in connection with the ex-athlete’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”.