One of the allegations against Ontario lawyer Deepak Paradkar is that he advised Ryan Wedding and Andrew Clark that killing a key witness could collapse the FBI investigation against them.Dave Chidley/The Canadian Press
In October, 2024, police in Arkansas pulled over two vehicles carrying 521 kilograms of cocaine bound for Canada. Within hours, court records say, bosses in a powerful drug cartel were discussing “killing everyone involved” to keep them from talking to investigators.
Soon, a lawyer from Brampton, Ont., allegedly weighed into a group chat with the cartel’s leaders with strict instructions: “Clear this convo,” he said, adding “set up a separate group for you” and “only lawyer stuff for me.”
That lawyer, according to arrest warrant applications filed this week in Toronto and Montreal, was Deepak Paradkar, a high-profile criminal lawyer who has been practising law in Ontario since 1993. The additional details contained in the Canadian court filings, provided by the U.S. Department of Justice, go beyond what was released in a U.S. indictment in California unsealed earlier this week.
The Canadian legal filings are part of the extradition process against Mr. Paradkar and others linked to an alleged criminal network that the FBI says is run by former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding. The details contained within these documents offer more insight into how Mr. Wedding, and his alleged Canadian second-in-command Andrew Clark, used lawyers and often brutal violence to run their business.
A timeline of Ryan Wedding’s shift from Olympic snowboarder to alleged drug kingpin and FBI fugitive
The filings show that the evidence against Mr. Paradkar comes from a co-operating FBI witness, and from Mr. Clark’s own phone, which was seized by Mexican authorities and handed over to the FBI in March, 2025. On that phone, investigators found a group chat called “911 Arkansa” that referred to the Arkansas seizure in which Mr. Clark allegedly told Mr. Wedding that Mr. Paradkar would sort it out.
Mr. Paradkar allegedly told the group he would investigate and had located the two drivers in a small town near Little Rock. But Mr. Clark and Mr. Wedding were worried: They believed one driver had already “busted” and was now “telling on everyone,” the court documents say.
Mr. Paradkar, 62, is charged with conspiracy to commit murder, drug-trafficking and conspiracy to tamper with a witness. He’s accused of investigating seizures of cocaine for the cartel and paying other lawyers in Canada and the U.S. to determine if their clients were co-operating with police. For this work, he was compensated with “bulk cash drops” and expensive watches, the documents say.
Along with six other Canadians charged this week, including a Toronto jeweller and an ex-junior hockey player from Calgary, he’s facing extradition to the U.S., where if found guilty, he could face life in prison. Mr. Wedding, meanwhile, has been on the run from the FBI since 2015.
None of the allegations have been tested in court.
Ravin Pillay, a Toronto lawyer who appeared in court earlier this week for Mr. Paradkar, said Friday that he can’t speak about the case. Mr. Paradkar is due back in court on Wednesday.
One of the most stunning allegations against Mr. Paradkar is that he advised Mr. Wedding and Mr. Clark that the killing of a key witness could collapse the FBI’s case against them and help them avoid extradition from Mexico to face criminal charges. That witness, Montreal’s Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, was later executed in a Colombian restaurant in January, 2025, after the FBI says Mr. Wedding put a bounty on his head.
Mr. Paradkar is accused of receiving a phone that was used as proof that Mr. Acebedo-Garcia was planning to testify against the cartel, according to an affidavit filed by the RCMP on Nov. 17, one day prior to this week’s arrests. That phone is alleged to have been handed over to Mr. Paradkar by Atna Ohna of Montreal, police say.
The court documents allege that Mr. Ohna, also arrested this week, texted Mr. Acebedo-Garcia weeks before he died to confirm that he was working with the FBI. He now stands accused of passing his phone as a tip to Mr. Wedding’s organization.
The filings also say that Mr. Paradkar had a group chat with Mr. Wedding and another man, via an encrypted messaging app. Authorities allege that in an October, 2024, conversation, Mr. Paradkar told Mr. Wedding and the other individual, who later became an informant, that if Mr. Acebedo-Garcia was eliminated, it would mean the indictment would almost certainly be dismissed.
A U.S. legal expert says the investigation illustrates the limits of attorney-client privilege, a cornerstone of the justice system. The shield applies to confidential legal advice provided by lawyers to their clients about past activity, but it doesn’t cover discussions about new crimes. As well, it does not apply to communications between lawyers and clients that also involve other individuals, such as group chats.
David Sklansky, a law professor at Stanford University who is a former federal prosecutor, said the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have internal guidelines requiring special approval when lawyers surface on wiretaps or other intercepted communications.
Prosecutors some times even set up separate teams to screen evidence to determine if it is covered by attorney-client privilege, before the materials are passed on to investigators, to avoid risking the case at trial, he said.
Who are the Canadians facing charges connected to Ryan Wedding?
“You want to protect the ability of people to talk to a lawyer about how they should deal with their legal situations in order to ensure that people get adequate counsel,” Mr. Sklansky said.
“But if they’re using that privilege as a cloak for planning more crimes or more frauds, then American law says it no longer is in the public interest to protect those communications.”
Canada and the U.S. both offer a carve-out to solicitor-client privilege when it comes to criminal communication, said Alain Roussy, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. If the communication itself furthers a crime, it loses the protection normally given to confidential lawyer-client discussions.
“If I’m saying, ‘oh could you help me launder money?’ And the lawyer says, ‘oh sure, here’s how it works,’ then privilege does not attach to that kind of thing,” Mr. Roussy said.
With a report from Mariya Postelnyak