Ryan James Wedding, a Earlier Olympic Snowboarder—Grew to change into The United States’s Most Wanted—Has Been Arrested by the FBI
Identity theft
On Wednesday evening, Kash Patel boarded a Federal Bureau of Investigation Boeing 757 proceed for Mexico. In beneath forty eight hours, he would blueprint face-to-face with the man whose image had been plastered all over FBI Ten Most Wanted posters: Ryan James Wedding, a Canadian Olympic snowboarder allegedly modified into “new-day Pablo Escobar” and, in step with prosecutors, the architect of a billion-dollar-a-yr cocaine empire. After two years, at least 36 arrests, a series of sanctions, and raids that resulted in the seizure of every thing from two Olympic medals to 62 bikes, the aptly named Operation Slalom has neared its live.
The FBI labored with Mexican rules enforcement officials who, on Thursday, in the center of the evening, apprehended Wedding. After an intense negotiation, Wedding modified into later taken into US custody by the FBI Hostage Rescue Crew, the identical crew that captured Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela approved weeks sooner than. “This modified into a posh, excessive-stakes operation with zero margin for error. I modified into on the ground with our crew in Mexico and witnessed unheard of teamwork, precision, and have faith between our brokers and partners in Mexico,” Kash Patel instructed Arrogance Lovely. “After almost a decade on the breeze, Ryan Wedding is now in US custody the set up aside he belongs.”
The rescue crew modified into fascinating for a immense series of outcomes, alongside with having to spend foremost power to apprehend Wedding. Patel and the FBI HRT transported Wedding from Mexico to Los Angeles this morning, the set up aside Wedding faces costs of cocaine trafficking and homicide, amongst varied costs.
Courtesy of FBI.
Identified in underground circles as “the Giant” and “El Jefe,” federal authorities notify he oversaw a pipeline of as grand as 60 a total bunch cocaine yearly—from Colombia via Mexico, into the USA by capability of California, and in a roundabout device as much as Canada—making him, allegedly, one in every of the ideal drug traffickers in North The United States. “He controls one in every of basically the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in this world,” Attorney Fashioned Pamela Bondi said at a news convention in November.
He did this from the consolation of his house, first in Montreal and later in Mexico, the set up aside, in step with the FBI, he lived beneath the protection of the nasty Sinaloa Cartel. “He wished to be the live dogs,” retired FBI agent Brett Kalina instructed The New York Situations. Kalina modified into the lead investigator on a 2008 San Diego sting that landed Wedding in penal complex for the most foremost time, after he tried to purchase fifty three pounds of cocaine from an secret agent.
“He modified into varied than any varied subject I’ve ever arrested,” Kalina said. Whereas Wedding’s coconspirators cooperated with authorities, Wedding did now not. Kalina recalls how he vulnerable his dimension to intimidate—chest pushed out, presence looming. “I mediate he felt invincible.”
Wedding modified into first incarcerated in 2008 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the set up aside, in step with Kalina, he started forging connections and engaging classes from seasoned foreign traffickers. “We did hear comments he’d invent about meeting attention-grabbing of us and discovering out things,” said Kalina, who listened to phone calls Wedding made to the outside world.
After his conviction for conspiracy to visitors cocaine, Wedding modified into transferred to a federal penal complex in Texas. There, he met the man who, more than a decade later, would lend a hand raise about his downfall: Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, a Colombian Canadian with deep info of the replace. Upon Wedding’s liberate in December 2011, the FBI alleges that he formally established his trafficking group and installed Acebedo-Garcia as one in every of his most trusted operatives.
Then, in 2024, Acebedo-Garcia perceived to fade. Within Wedding’s group, terror bells went off. Notice unfold that he had been flipped by the FBI. He earned a brand new nickname: the rat.
In accordance to a US indictment, Wedding’s attorney, Deepak Paradkar—who most regularly operated beneath the alias “cocaine approved expert”—advised that Wedding’s approved publicity might be a ways reduced if Acebedo-Garcia might maybe now not physically testify. Soon after, prosecutors relate in the indictment, Wedding save a $5 million bounty on his worn operative’s head. Paradkar, himself, modified into arrested in Canada and charged in 2025 for conspiracy to commit homicide and conspiracy to retaliate in opposition to a imagine after allegedly encouraging Wedding to homicide a key imagine in his case. He is currently out on bail, staring at for an extradition hearing, and denies any wrongdoing. (Paradkar did now not reply to VF’s ask for comment).
The message traveled snappy and wide: via a expert Canadian poker player and diamond vendor; Wedding’s 34-yr-used Mexican companion (who he married whereas indifferent in penal complex, and who is also wished, alongside with his 23-yr-used Colombian female friend, by the FBI). A Colombian madam who runs a excessive-live escort carrier in Mexico Metropolis and one in every of her escorts have both already been arrested in connection to this case. Add to that Wedding’s alleged community of sicarios—trained, prosecutors notify, by a worn Italian mercenary tied to laundering money and procuring luxury objects for Wedding, alongside with an extremely uncommon Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR roadster.
Acebedo-Garcia modified into shot 5 times in the head final January after having lunch with mates at a restaurant in Medellín, Colombia. Authorities notify that Wedding quick received a picture of the physique, which he circulated, cheerily touting that he had killed “the rat.”
“Wedding positioned the bounty on the sufferer’s head, and the false perception that the sufferer’s loss of life would consequence in the dismissal of criminal costs in opposition to him and his global drug trafficking ring, and would extra be obvious that that that he modified into now not extradited to the USA, says Bill Essayli, the live federal prosecutor for the Central District of California. “He modified into snide.”
That is a rising story.
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