{"id":341712,"date":"2025-12-13T02:35:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T02:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/341712\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T02:35:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T02:35:12","slug":"cocaine-lawyer-linked-to-fugitive-ryan-wedding-could-be-killed-if-granted-bail-court-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/341712\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Cocaine lawyer’ linked to fugitive Ryan Wedding could be killed if granted bail, court told"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A Toronto-area lawyer \u2014 who allegedly counselled fugitive Ryan Wedding to murder an FBI witness \u2014 is \u201cnot safe out there\u201d and risks being assassinated if he\u2019s released on bail, an Ontario court has been told.<\/p>\n

Deepak Paradkar appeared from the prisoner box in a downtown Toronto court Friday for the third straight day of a bail hearing. Paradkar, 62, was arrested last month and faces extradition to the U.S. amid allegations he played a key role in Wedding\u2019s purported murderous drug-trafficking empire.<\/p>\n

Heather Graham, a lawyer for the Department of Justice Canada told the court that as long as Paradkar faces legal proceedings, he remains \u201ca huge liability\u201d to Wedding\u2019s organization, which has been linked to dozens of murders.<\/p>\n

Wedding\u2019s network \u201cis highly motivated\u201d to prevent Paradkar from standing trial in California, Graham told Ontario Superior Court Justice Peter Bawden. \u201cThere\u2019s no telling what would happen to him, his family, anyone connected to him.”<\/p>\n

Authorities allege lawyer had role in crime network<\/p>\n

According to U.S. prosecutors, Wedding and his second-in-command, Andrew Clark, gave Paradkar expensive watches and \u201ccash drops\u201d to play a multi-faceted role in their network. <\/p>\n

Authorities allege Paradkar exploited his title as lawyer to gather intelligence on behalf of Wedding and also helped identify trucking networks to smuggle cocaine from Los Angeles to Canada. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, U.S. authorities accuse Paradkar of advising Wedding to have a former ally-turned-FBI informant killed, to ensure the criminal case against Wedding would fall apart. It didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\"ManThunder Bay, Ont.-born fugitive Ryan Wedding is seen in an undated picture. The U.S. State Department is offering a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to his capture. (U.S. Embassy Mexico)<\/p>\n

According to a U.S. indictment unsealed last month, Paradkar went by aliases such as \u201ccocaine lawyer\u201d and \u201cDescartes.\u201d He faces a mandatory life sentence if convicted on charges including conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to retaliate against a witness.<\/p>\n

Paradkar\u2019s legal licence was suspended<\/a> last week. He has denied wrongdoing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wedding, who competed for Canada as a snowboarder at the 2002 Olympic Games, is listed as one of the FBI\u2019s 10 most-wanted fugitives. He\u2019s suspected of hiding out in Mexico while running a transnational criminal enterprise linked to the notorious Sinaloa cartel.<\/p>\n

According to partial transcripts of encrypted chats included in a recent court filing, Clark told Wedding \u201cDeepak on it,\u201d after a seizure of 521 kilograms of the network\u2019s cocaine on the road in Arkansas in October 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clark purportedly told Wedding that an investigation was underway, and they were planning to “shut the driver down” and “kill everyone involved.”<\/p>\n

\"ARyan Wedding’s alleged second-in-command, fellow Canadian Andrew Clark, centre, was arrested in Mexico in October 2024 in an operation involving Interpol and the Mexican navy. (Omar Garc\u00eda Harfuch\/Facebook)<\/p>\n

In court on Friday, Graham, the Justice Department lawyer, said Paradkar would be doing \u201ceverything he can to assure the organization that he\u2019s not co-operating,\u201d following the January murder of the FBI witness.<\/p>\n

Montreal-born Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia was shot in a Medellin, Colombia, restaurant after Wedding came to view him as a \u201crat\u201d and allegedly placed a $5-million US bounty on his head.<\/p>\n

Bawden said based on what Graham said, \u201cif [Paradkar] is to get bail, his first priority has got to be staying alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham agreed, insisting Paradkar \u201cis not safe out there,\u201d and neither are his proposed sureties, including his wife. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these people are at risk,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

WATCH | $13-million Mercedes supercar linked to Ryan Wedding seized by the FBI:\"\"<\/p>\n

We found out who bought a $13M Mercedes now linked to fugitive Ryan Wedding<\/p>\n

As the FBI continues its hunt for Ryan Wedding, the former Olympian turned alleged cocaine kingpin, CBC News has learned how he may have used a $13-million US Mercedes as part of a global money laundering scheme.Paradkar poses flight risk: U.S. prosecutors\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a letter filed in Ontario Superior Court amid Paradkar\u2019s bail proceedings and reviewed by CBC News, U.S. prosecutors allege he poses a \u201csubstantial\u201d flight risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cWritten communications located during this investigation revealed that Paradkar himself is connected to persons identified by law enforcement authorities as enforcers or hitmen for the [transnational criminal organization],\u201d L.A.-based assistant U.S. attorneys Lyndsi Allsop and Kenneth Carbajal wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cParadkar\u2019s association with and membership in a billion-dollar transnational drug organization makes him a danger to the community,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

Defence lawyer Ravin Pillay, who is representing Paradkar, told the court the letter is not backed up by evidence and is \u201cnot credible or trustworthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bawden is expected to render his decision to grant or deny Paradkar bail on Dec. 23.<\/p>\n

He repeatedly questioned whether at Paradkar\u2019s age, he truly represents a flight risk. However, Bawden said \u201cthe most important aspects of the case are certainly irrefutable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-341712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}