U.S. authorities believe fugitive Ryan Wedding is hiding in Mexico and last week upped the bounty for his capture to US$15-million.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Yuri, the burly man the two Canadians thought was a former KGB agent, became very upset at them right after they landed in Los Angeles from Vancouver. Where was the money, he asked? Why hadn’t they brought money for the cocaine?
One of the Canadians, the tall one Yuri knew as the athlete, retorted that he certainly wasn’t going to fly across borders with a suitcase full of cash.
Those words would later be used against the tall man, the former Olympian Ryan Wedding, who was eventually found guilty of conspiring to distribute cocaine.
A timeline of Ryan Wedding’s shift from Olympic snowboarder to alleged drug kingpin and FBI fugitive
Who are the Canadians facing charges connected to Ryan Wedding?
His past as an elite athlete was mentioned in the opening statements at his 2009 trial, when his lawyer told jurors that Mr. Wedding was a former national team snowboarder, an upstanding young man tricked into a tawdry scheme.
Today, Mr. Wedding is 44 and one of the world’s most wanted fugitives, allegedly the boss of a billion-dollar trafficking ring. American authorities believe he is hiding in Mexico and last week upped the bounty for his capture to US$15-million.
Ryan Wedding competed for Team Canada in the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002.Adam Pretty/Getty Images
Officials also announced last week a slew of new arrests, many of them in Canada and linked to the murder of a key witness in Medellín, Colombia, allegedly on the order of Mr. Wedding.
But his first encounter with the American justice system happened nearly two decades earlier, when he was swept up in a cross-border drug trafficking investigation. The details of that case, included in more than 1,200 pages of transcripts from his subsequent jury trial, shed light on his activities long before he made international headlines and began being compared to Pablo Escobar.
Mr. Wedding was just 25 when the FBI arrested him, six years after he represented Canada at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Prosecutors alleged that he and two associates travelled from British Columbia to California to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of cocaine that they planned to resell at twice the price in Canada.
Mr. Wedding hadn’t initially been on the radar of U.S. law enforcement. FBI Special Agent Brett Kalina testified that investigators only became aware of the former Olympian’s involvement when they saw him exit the customs gate at Los Angeles International Airport on June 10, 2008.
His travelling companion, Hassan Shirani, chose to co-operate with the FBI after being caught.
Mr. Shirani, a Vancouver drug dealer of Iranian origin, was familiar with the hawala, the money-transfer system where cash is handed to a local broker, who would supply a code word to get a trusted partner in another country to disburse money.
He testified that he previously arranged for Mr. Wedding to move US$250,000 to California via hawala. However, Mr. Wedding told Mr. Shirani afterward that the recipient stole the money instead of getting him narcotics.
Mr. Shirani agreed to set up another deal for Mr. Wedding and put him in touch with two Vancouver men, Michael Krapchan and Elmar Akhundov, who knew a cocaine supplier in San Diego, Yuri.
Unbeknownst to them, the FBI was investigating Mr. Akhundov for money laundering and drug trafficking, according to an affidavit by Mr. Kalina.
The British Columbia men decided to buy 24 kilograms, worth US$340,000. Mr. Krapchan flew out first to connect with Yuri.
The court heard that Yuri Trofimov was once a presidential bodyguard in Kazakhstan. The Canadians thought he was a former KGB officer. They didn’t know he was co-operating with the FBI.
Mr. Krapchan was recorded on a wiretap telling Mr. Trofimov that two men would arrive from Canada to finalize the deal: an Iranian and a tall athlete.
Mr. Shirani and Mr. Wedding were met at the airport by Mr. Krapchan and Mr. Trofimov.
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a news conference on Nov. 19, standing next to a wanted poster for former Olympian Ryan Wedding.Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press
They weren’t aware Mr. Trofimov carried hidden recorders in a pocket and a key fob. He told them he wanted to complete the deal in San Diego right away.
The Canadians explained that they didn’t have the cash yet. “We have to go get it. I mean, obviously, I didn’t put it in my … suitcase,” Mr. Wedding said.
Mr. Shirani testified that Mr. Trofimov became very agitated but finally agreed to return empty-handed to San Diego.
Mr. Wedding and Mr. Shirani remained in Los Angeles and went to the hawala broker, in the backroom of a Persian rug store, where stacks of cash were taken out of a safe for them to count.
Mr. Shirani eventually retrieved a first sum of US$100,000, wrapped in newspapers and stuffed into a plastic bag. He hid it under the bottom drawer of the TV dresser in their room at the Comfort Inn, on Ventura Boulevard.
On June 13, they drove down to San Diego.
Mr. Krapchan left to buy an initial one-kilo sample from Mr. Trofimov. The other two waited in his room at the Hampton Inn. Mr. Shirani was anxious and had a headache. Mr. Wedding took a nap.
After 90 minutes, they left the room to get some food. FBI agents waited outside the hotel to arrest them, having already nabbed Mr. Krapchan.
Another Canadian arrested in connection to alleged role in Ryan Wedding case
On the first trial day, Mr. Wedding scribbled a note to his sister in the audience. It was intercepted. It said: “See you soon, dear. Ha, ha. Miss you, love you, Ryan.”
Over the rest of the sheet, he had repeatedly written “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” – like the main character in the horror movie The Shining.
Looking at the note, District Judge Jeffrey Miller remarked that Mr. Wedding seemed to be “taking this pretty lightly.”
Two days later, Mr. Wedding tried to pass another note. “Tell him to knock it off,” the judge admonished David Denis, the defence lawyer.
Mr. Denis put Mr. Wedding’s mother on the stand to testify about her son.
“Was he raised to be trusting?” Mr. Denis asked Karen Wedding, a registered nurse.
“Absolutely,” she replied.
The jury didn’t buy it and found Mr. Wedding guilty.
“I allowed myself to be lured by the idea of easy money … what I did was completely out of character for me,” he assured the judge before he was sentenced.
He received a four-year jail term and was released at the end of 2011.
Within four years, he was in trouble with the law again. In 2015, the RCMP issued a warrant for his arrest, alleging that he was smuggling cocaine from St. Kitts to Montreal via Newfoundland. He has been a fugitive ever since.