Ryan Wedding , a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder suspected of becoming a cocaine smuggling boss , has been arrested in Mexico and will be transferred to the United States to face charges.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the arrest in separate posts on X.
US and Canadian authorities described the man arrested in November as a "drug trafficker" on the same level as notorious drug lords such as Mexican Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, who is serving a sentence in a maximum security prison in the US, and Colombian Pablo Escobar, who has died.
US Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wedding worked closely with the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, which controls an operation responsible for generating more than $1 billion a year in illegal drug revenue.
Bondi said at the time that Wedding worked closely with the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, which controls an operation responsible for generating more than $1 billion a year in illegal drug revenue.
Wedding, who competed for Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, has been charged with overseeing a criminal enterprise and multiple drug trafficking charges, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ).
He was also accused of ordering several drug-related killings, including that of a U.S. federal witness in Colombia in January 2025, before she could testify against him, the Justice Department previously reported.