Former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding has been arrested by the FBI in Mexico, the Associated Press reports.
Wedding, 44, is on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List on charges including murder and money laundering. He is also accused of being the leader of the largest cocaine distribution operation in his native Canada.
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The FBI announced in November that it would increase the reward for information leading to Wedding’s arrest and/or conviction from $10 million to $15 million, with the announcement expected on Friday.
During the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, Wedding was a member of the Canadian team that finished 24th in the parallel giant slalom. From there, the Justice Department alleges, he built a criminal enterprise that worked with prominent Mexican drug cartels to move hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico by ship or plane, and then to the United States and Canada by semi-truck.
Separately, authorities have accused Wedding’s gang of masterminding the murders of three people, including one federal witness who was set to testify before Wedding was fatally shot at a restaurant in Medellin, Colombia. Vidin allegedly found the witness by posting his photo to a website that has since been deleted.
At a November press conference, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi called Wedding “one of the world’s most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizers,” while FBI Director Kash Patel described him as “a modern-day version of Pablo Escobar.”
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Bondi claims that more than 2,000 kilograms of cocaine were seized during the investigation, as well as a “large quantity” of weapons, $3.2 million in cryptocurrency and $13 million in other assets.
Since 2015, Wedding has also faced separate charges for drug trafficking in Canada. He was previously convicted of conspiring to distribute cocaine in the United States and was sentenced to prison in 2010, according to federal records.
If convicted of murder and attempted murder, Wedding faces a mandatory minimum sentence of life in federal prison in addition to the ongoing criminal enterprise charges.