A former Canadian Olympic snowboarder wanted by federal authorities as the alleged head of a violent, transnational drug ring was accused Wednesday of ordering the murder of a witness who could testify against him.
An already existing reward for information leading to the arrest and/or prosecution of Ryan Wedding, who is believed to be residing in Mexico, was increased to $15 million. Ten associates of his, including a professional poker player, were said to have been taken into custody, just more than a year after 12 other alleged associates were previously arrested in what law enforcement officials dubbed “Operation Giant Slalom.”
Wedding competed for Canada in the snowboarding parallel giant slalom at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, where he finished 24th. On Wednesday, FBI Director Kash Patel described Wedding, 44, as “a modern-day iteration” of the notorious drug kingpins Pablo Escobar and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
“He is responsible for engineering a narco trafficking and narcoterrorism program that we have not seen in a long time,” Patel said of Wedding during a news conference at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., where he was flanked by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and other officials, including the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “He will not evade justice.”
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The first person featured on the FBI’s list of 10 most wanted fugitives, Wedding has a reward amount at least three times higher than anyone else in that group. In an indictment brought by a grand jury and filed last month in a California federal court, Wedding was alleged to lead a billion-dollar enterprise depicted as “the largest supplier of cocaine to Canada,” with operations in that country and in the United States, Mexico and Colombia. He was said to have worked with “prominent Mexican drug cartels” to move cocaine from Colombia to Mexico, then to have used semi trucks to ship the drugs to a “hub” in Southern California before they ended up primarily in Canada but also in various American states.
The US Department of State offers a reward of up to $15 million for info leading to the arrest &/or conviction of #FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive Ryan James Wedding, wanted for allegedly running & participating in a transnational drug trafficking operation: https://t.co/YyLpIU4Nmi pic.twitter.com/3DdiopiL9W
— FBI Most Wanted (@FBIMostWanted) November 19, 2025
In addition to employing people to move and store the cocaine, as well as “financiers” to handle the profits, per the indictment, Wedding’s operation also comprised “sicarios who were recruited and paid by the enterprise for the purpose of murdering perceived rivals, disfavored persons, and supposed cooperators.”
Among those arrested Tuesday was Deepak Balwant Paradkar, a 62-year-old Ontario resident said to have abetted some of Wedding’s crimes, including the murder of the witness, while serving as the ex-Olympian’s attorney. In the indictment, the unidentified witness was depicted as an intermediary through whom Wedding purchased 300 kilograms of cocaine last year to be shipped from Colombia.
Sometime around October 2024, per the indictment, Paradkar advised Wedding that if the witness were killed, the “charges against them in [last year’s indictment] and related extradition proceedings would necessarily be dismissed.” Wedding was said to have then placed a bounty of up to $5 million on the witness, resulting in a group of people collaborating to track down the witness in Medellín, Colombia. The witness was shot five times in the head, per authorities, while eating at a restaurant. Wedding then allegedly ordered that payments be made to participants in the locating and killing of the witness.
One of the participants, said to be as a “hired sicario” who resided in Canada, allegedly received a “bejeweled necklace” as an extra reward. The necklace maker was identified as Rolan Sokolovski, a 37-year-old Toronto resident and member of Wedding’s operation who was described as a “professional poker player, jeweler, and procurer.” Online records from the World Series of Poker show that Sokolovski competed in three of its tournaments from 2013 to 2015, earning a total of $24,071.
Sokolovski was also among the 10 people arrested Tuesday, seven in Canada. Two more were indicated to have been arrested in Colombia and one, described as a legal permanent resident from Colombia, was detained in Orlando.
“Ryan Wedding controls one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in this world and works closely with the Sinaloa Cartel,” Bondi said in a statement. “We will not rest until his name is taken off the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted List, and his narco-trafficking organization lies dismantled.”
The grandson of a couple who owned a modest ski club near Ontario’s Thunder Bay, per a July profile in Toronto Life magazine, Wedding grew up in a family that hit the slopes as often as possible. His uncle, Craig Spiess, was a coach for the Canadian women’s national Alpine ski team and helped his country win gold in the downhill at the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, France. Wedding reportedly picked up snowboarding at age 12 and got so good, so quickly, that he was on Canada’s national team at 15 and was 20 when he made his Olympic appearance.
In 2006, the RCMP reportedly raided a marijuana growing operation at a Vancouver-area farm co-owned by Wedding and another accomplished snowboarder. They were not at the farm when the raid took place, per reports, and Wedding wasn’t charged.
Two years later, he was arrested in San Diego and eventually convicted on a charge of conspiring to distribute 24 kilos of cocaine, which resulted in a four-year prison sentence that included two years already served. After Wedding’s release from prison, he was extradited to Canada and moved to Montreal, where in 2015 he was charged with conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the country. By the time the RCMP closed in, however, Wedding had disappeared, and he is believed to have fled then to Mexico.
The witness against Wedding is not the first person he is accused of having had killed. The recent indictment included details of a 2023 episode in which Wedding allegedly ordered the murder of a shipment driver he believed had stolen a large amount of cocaine from him. In what was described as a case of mistaken identity, one or more assassins broke into an Ontario rental property, shot and killed a married couple who were there visiting from India and seriously injured their daughter in the erroneous belief that the family was related to the driver.
The indictment provides a number of nicknames or aliases for the 6-foot-3, 240-pound Wedding, including “Giant,” “Grande,” “El Jefe,” “El Guerro” and “El Coco.” In some Spanish-speaking cultures, “El Coco” can refer to a monster or form of bogeyman that preys on disobedient children.
“Ryan Wedding’s athletic drive snowballed into a life of violence,” an official with the FBI’s Los Angeles field office said Wednesday in a statement, “and, instead of conquering mountains, he mastered a deadly drug distribution enterprise and will continue to order murders while he enjoys protection by his cartel associates and others. ‘Operation Giant Slalom’ is a dynamic international investigation and involves dedicated partners collaborating in multiple countries with the shared goal of capturing Wedding, finding justice for several murder victims — including a cooperating witness — and ridding communities in North America of deadly drugs.”
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