In 2002, Ryan Wedding competed for Canada in the men's parallel giant slalom at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. He is now being pursued by federal agents as part of a US operation called Giant Slalom.

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Adam Pretty/AP

Ryan Wedding, who represented Canada in snowboarding at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, is now a fugitive from U.S. justice, accused of leading a violent international drug trafficking ring. Wedding is said to have orchestrated the transport of tons of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico, the USA and Canada – and he is accused of ordering several murders.

The FBI says Wedding, 43, is a fugitive and may be in Mexico. A federal arrest warrant was issued against him in the U.S. Central District Court in Los Angeles a month ago. He worked with the notorious Sinaloa Cartel, the U.S. Attorney's Office told NPR.

A grand jury indictment was first filed in June, accusing Wedding of numerous crimes. He is the lead defendant in a superseding indictment unsealed this week that names a total of 16 people.

“They unleashed an avalanche of violent crime, including brutal murders,” Matthew Allen, special agent in charge of the Los Angeles Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said in a statement. “Wedding, the Olympic snowboarder, has gone from navigating slopes to carving out a life of incessant crime.”

Ryan Wedding appears on an FBI wanted poster. The U.S. says Wedding, 43, is a refugee and may be in Mexico.

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Authorities allege the drug conspiracy was carried out on a large scale, listing locations from Colombia and Mexico to three California counties – Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino – and Miami-Dade County, Florida.

Agents were able to monitor the group's actions earlier this year thanks to a mole who passed encrypted messages about alleged drug shipments through the encrypted messaging application Threema, the indictment says.

The indictment describes a sophisticated scheme in which Canada-based trucking companies allegedly used dollar bill serial numbers as “tokens” to verify the identities of co-conspirators as they arranged for tractor-trailers to transport tons of cocaine from Southern California to Canada. According to court documents, the alleged heads of the company's transportation division agreed to a flat fee of C$220,000 for each load.

As part of the federal investigation – named “Operation Giant Slalom” based on an Olympic event in which Wedding once took part – police officers caught defendants with a total of around 1,800 kilograms (1.8 tons) of cocaine, according to the Justice Department. They also seized weapons, $255,400 in cash and more than $3.2 million in cryptocurrencies.

This week, Operation Giant Slalom extended to an elite enclave in Aventura, Florida. The FBI raided a million-dollar mansion that a defendant, Miami Beach music executive and restaurateur Nahim Jorge Bonilla, reportedly purchased from music star DJ Khaled.

According to the indictment, Wedding Bonilla sent 12 kilograms of cocaine, seven of which were paid for and five by mail. In June, Wedding threatened to kill Bonilla's mother if the remaining debt wasn't paid within three days, court documents say. Within a week, Bonilla allegedly paid Wedding two kilograms of cocaine and sent 20 kilograms of methamphetamine to Montreal, Canada, to pay off the rest of the debt.

Stacks of cocaine are seen in a Department of Justice image from August 1, when approximately 201 kilograms of cocaine were seized in Riverside County, California, as part of an international drug trafficking investigation.

U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California

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U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California

In other cases there are said to have been murders.

“Wedding and Clark allegedly ordered the murders of two family members in Ontario, Canada, on November 20, 2023, in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. According to the agency, another person was killed in May over unpaid debts, allegedly on orders from Wedding and Clark.

Twelve of the 16 defendants were arrested. According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, these include four Canadians arrested this week in Ontario and three Canadians arrested in the United States. But Wedding and several others remain at large.

If convicted, Wedding and several co-defendants “face a mandatory minimum sentence of life in federal prison for murder and attempted murder,” according to the Justice Department. Other charges in this case also carry similar penalties.

It is the second time that US authorities have brought serious drug charges against Wedding: In 2009, he was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and spent more than a year in prison. Canadian authorities had also previously investigated him as part of a drug investigation.

At the Salt Lake City Games in 2002, Wedding finished 24th in the parallel giant slalom, according to its Olympic biography.