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FBI Offering $15m for Arrest of Former Olympic Snowboarder Ryan Wedding

Originally posted on SNOWBOARDER | By Josh Sullivan | Last updated Nov 20, 2025 4:47 PM ET

In March 2025, Ryan Wedding was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list. The Associated Press first reported that news, and soon after, a feature from Rolling Stone followed.

The former Canadian Olympic snowboarder was wanted for running a “multinational drug trafficking network.”

U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Martin Estrada says that Wedding led an organization that routinely moves hundreds of kilos of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and Southern California to Canada. As a part of a massive sting in October of 2024, 12 members of the organization had been arrested. Wedding reportedly has connections to the Hells Angels and a Toronto-based group of organized criminals known as the Wolfpack. The FBI alleges that he was one of El Chapo’s go-to men in Canada, the Rolling Stone reported.

Now, Wedding is in the news again, for charges that are even more grim. Wedding is charged with killing a federal witness, according to United States Attorney General Pam Bondi. "Whether you are a street-level drug dealer ... or an international drug kingpin, we are coming for you," Bondi told reporters. "We will find you, and you will be accountable and held to justice for your crimes."

The FBI is offering $15,000,000 for information leading to the arrest of Wedding.

Reward poster for Ryan James Wedding.Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Wedding competed in parallel giant slalom at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. He finished in 24th place.

According to the AP, Wedding and his co-conspirators used a website called “the Dirty News” to post photos of the witness, in order to identify him and have him killed. The witness was shot in the head after he was followed to a restaurant in Medellín in January.

Jessica Hyde reported in her piece for Rolling Stone that Wedding’s entry into the drug world started when he began growing and moving marijuana in the Vancouver area, which eventually was noticed by the police in 2006. Police raided a grow operation that held 6,800 marijuana plants and loaded guns, among other things. At the time, it was considered the largest grow operation ever discovered by law enforcement.\

Wedding is also known under the names El Jefe, Giant, Public Enemy, James Conrad King, and Jesse King, the FBI says on its website. He and his second-in-command Andrew Clark have been charged with running a continuing criminal enterprise; committing murder in connection with a continuing criminal enterprise and assorted drug crimes; and conspiring to possess, distribute, and export cocaine.

Clark was arrested in October by Mexican law enforcement.

This article first appeared on SNOWBOARDER and was syndicated with permission.

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