Former Canadian Olympian indicted in major US cocaine smuggling case | Drug News

Snowboarder Ryan Wedding and 15 other people are accused of shipping 60 tons of cocaine annually to the USA and Canada.

U.S. prosecutors in Los Angeles, California, have charged a former Olympic snowboarder with allegedly running a large and violent cocaine smuggling operation out of Mexico.

On Thursday, the Justice Department released a 52-page indictment accusing 43-year-old Canadian athlete Ryan James Wedding and 15 others of shipping 60 tons of cocaine annually from Colombia to Canada and the United States. transport semi-trailers.

The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and extradition of Wedding, who is considered a fugitive and uses the aliases El Jefe, Giant and Public Enemy.

Agents also raided a $5 million luxury villa near Miami in South Florida and arrested its owner, 36-year-old music manager and restaurant owner Nahim Jorge Bonilla, who was also named in the indictment, The Miami Herald reported.

Bonilla is said to have received 12 kilograms of cocaine for distribution from Wedding and his co-defendant Andrew Clark. According to the indictment, Bonilla was in debt to Clark and Wedding, and the two men threatened to kill Bonilla's mother if he did not repay the amounts owed.

Wedding, who competed in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, is also charged in Canada in a separate drug case. He was previously convicted in the United States of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and was sentenced to prison in 2010, federal records show.

US authorities believe that after Wedding's release he resumed drug trafficking for the notorious Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.

“He chose to become a major drug trafficker and he chose to become a murderer,” Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, told reporters Thursday.

Authorities also said they seized more than $3 million worth of cocaine, weapons, ammunition, cash and cryptocurrencies in connection with their investigation.

“Wedding, the Olympic snowboarder, went from tackling the slopes to a life of incessant crime,” said Matthew Allen, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Los Angeles.

Of the 16 people charged with the drug trafficking conspiracy, four remain fugitives, Estrada said. A dozen other people were arrested in connection with the case in Florida, Michigan, Canada, Colombia and Mexico.

The criminal enterprise was also allegedly responsible for the November 20, 2023 murder of two members of an Indian family in Ontario, Canada, who were killed in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment.

At least one other person was also killed by the group.

Wedding's co-defendant, Clark, 34, is also a Canadian citizen. According to the Justice Department, he was arrested by Mexican authorities on October 8 under the alias “The Dictator.”