The United States has significantly raised its reward for information leading to the capture of Ryan Wedding, a former Olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug kingpin, as Canadian authorities announced the arrest of seven individuals linked to his network.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington on Wednesday, FBI Director Kash Patel described Wedding, 44, as a “modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar,” the notorious Colombian trafficker who terrorized South America before his death in 1993. The reward for information leading to Wedding’s arrest has risen from $10 million to $15 million.
Wedding, who represented Canada at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, is accused of running an international cocaine trafficking and narco-terrorism network and is believed to be hiding in Mexico. “He is extremely dangerous, extremely violent, and extremely wealthy,” said FBI agent Akil Davis.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wedding is responsible for trafficking an estimated $1 billion worth of cocaine annually, working closely with Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel to move roughly 60 metric tonnes of the drug into Los Angeles via southern border routes. “It’s killing our kids, our friends, our relatives. This man is responsible for a tremendous amount of that horror,” Bondi said.
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The arrests in Canada are part of a coordinated operation between U.S. and Canadian authorities, dubbed “Operation Giant Slalom.” Among those detained is Wedding’s lawyer, Deepak Paradkar, who allegedly advised him that eliminating a witness in a pending criminal case could secure dismissal of charges. That witness was subsequently murdered in Medellin, Colombia, in January 2025.
Another Canadian detainee, Gursewak Singh Bal, is accused of operating a fake news website, The Dirty News, and of publishing images of the victim and his wife to facilitate the killing. U.S. authorities are seeking extradition for all seven arrested in Canada, while three others linked to the Medellin murder were taken into custody in the United States.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Michael Duheme called Wedding “one of the top threats to Canadian public safety.” Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions against Wedding and his network through its Office of Foreign Asset Control, aiming to disrupt the financial infrastructure supporting his operations.
As law enforcement agencies in North America intensify the hunt, Wedding remains at large, and authorities warn the public that he is both highly dangerous and internationally connected—a stark reminder of the global scale of modern drug trafficking networks.