A new photo has been released Canadian drug trafficker Ryan James Wedding by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.
The FBI believes the new photo of Wedding, one of their 10 most wanted fugitives, was taken in Mexico this past summer.
The 44-year-old is wanted for allegedly running and participating in a transnational drug trafficking operation that, according to the FBI, routinely shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Columbia, through Mexico and southern California, to Canada and other locations in the United States.
Wedding is also allegedly involved in orchestrating multiple murders in relation to the drug crimes.
There is currently a $15 million USD reward offered by the FBI for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Wedding, who was once named in a search warrant in Maple Ridge.
In an indictment unsealed on Nov. 19, charges were announced against the former snowboarder, who had represented Canada in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is charged in the killing of a witness in a federal narcotics case against him, on Jan. 31, 2025.
Wedding is accused of placing a bounty on the victim and enlisting the services of others to locate and kill the victim, who was shot to death in a restaurant in Medellin, Columbia.
Wedding is also charged with allegedly overseeing the operations of a criminal enterprise, engaging in witness intimidation tactics, and enriching himself with the enterprise’s laundered drug proceeds.
He has been described by officials in the U.S. as being a “narco-trafficker” on par with notorious drug lords like Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Pablo Escobar.
In 2006, Wedding was named in a Maple Ridge search warrant and was investigated for allegedly growing large amounts of illicit cannabis, but was never charged, according to his biography on olympics.com, a website that provides the names, results, and biographies of all athletes who took part in the Olympics.
In May, 2010, he was convicted of attempting to buy cocaine from a US government agent in 2008, and was sentenced to four years in prison, the site also stated.
A 2024 indictment revealed Wedding was also charged with running a continuing criminal enterprise, and directing the November 20, 2023, murders of two members of a family in Caledon, Ontario, in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment that passed through Southern California.
Another member of that family survived the shooting, but was left with serious injuries.
At the Nov. 19 press conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., officials said there were also additional rewards being offered for information leading to the arrests of assassins who murdered the potential witness.
They also named 10 defendants whom they arrested Tuesday, Nov. 18, in what the government agency called “Operation Giant Slalom”
Officials said Wedding is believed to live in Mexico where he works with the Sinaloa Cartel to flood U.S. and Canadian communities with cocaine from Colombia, and that the cartel is protecting him.
If convicted, Wedding – and the defendants charged in connection with the victim’s murder – would face a maximum sentence of life in federal prison.
Wedding goes by the aliases James Conrad King, or Jesse King, and is considered armed and dangerous.
He is 6’3” tall, 240 lbs., with brown hair and blue eyes. He speaks both English and Spanish.
A federal arrest warrant was issued for Wedding in a U.S. district court, in California in 2024.
Anyone with information about Wedding is being asked to contact the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office at (310) 477-6565, or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate, or submit a tip online at: https://tips.fbi.gov/home.