Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Friday that Ryan Wedding, a former Olympic snowboarder turned alleged cocaine trafficker, was caught and brought to the United States.
Bondi, according to a report on X, stated that “the agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigations caught the Olympic snowboarder, who is on the Ten Most Wanted list, and he was flown to the United States where he will face justice.”
Wedding, 44, is a Canadian citizen and was the subject of a federal case in which prosecutors say he was connected to a violent cross-border cocaine business and money laundering.
Authorities say the group transported cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and into the U.S., including Southern California, and also to Canada.
The arrest of Wedding follows a number of announcements by the United States authorities over the past year that have identified the suspect as an integral part of an international human trafficking syndicate that operates globally.
In an October 2024 press release, the DEA declared that a superseding indictment had been filed against a group of defendants, charging them with a case involving bulk cocaine shipments and murder.
The FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list was expanded by the addition of Wedding’s name in March 2025, a move that raised the level of the manhunt and included a reward offer, as declared by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
The Justice Department announced more arrests in November 2025, stating that Wedding managed the enterprises, employed intimidation tactics, and used laundered drug proceeds to enrich himself, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
He competed for Canada in the 2002 Snowboarding event in the Salt Lake City Olympics.
It has been alleged by the U.S. Government that after his sports career, he developed his organized crime connections in North America, operating out of Mexico.
Bondi credited the Mexican authorities and the U.S. officials with helping to apprehend the suspect and emphasized that the arrest is a sign of the stepped-up effort to find fugitives.
More information regarding the proceedings and the next course of action is likely to come to light as Wedding enters the federal system.
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