ORANGE COUNTY, CA \u2014 Arraignment is expected Monday in Santa Ana for accused drug lord Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder who faces federal charges alleging he ran a narcotics trafficking organization and ordered the killing of a witness.<\/p>\n
The court appearance had originally been set to take place in downtown Los Angeles but over the weekend was shifted to Orange County.<\/p>\n
The 44-year-old Wedding — who was sixth on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List until his arrest late last week — is believed to have been hiding in Mexico for more than a decade, and has been wanted on cocaine trafficking and murder charges since 2024.<\/p>\n
FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X on Friday that Wedding was taken into custody in Mexico City on Thursday night. He was flown to the Los Angeles area on Friday to face federal charges.<\/p>\n
A $15 million reward had been offered for information leading to his capture and conviction.<\/p>\n
“This is a huge day for a safer North America, and the world, and a message that those who break our laws and harm our citizens will be brought to justice,” Patel posted.<\/p>\n
Wedding was allegedly running a transnational drug trafficking operation that routinely shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California across the United States and Canada, as a member of the Sinaloa Cartel, according to Patel.<\/p>\n
Wedding was indicted in October on multiple federal charges, including running a continuing criminal enterprise, committing murder in connection with a continuing criminal enterprise and assorted drug crimes.<\/p>\n
The nine-count updated indictment alleges that Wedding ordered the killing of a witness who was set to testify against him in a federal drug case.<\/p>\n
Wedding is among 19 defendants — including a Canadian criminal barrister, a reggaeton musician, and a would-be gangland news website operator – – charged in connection with the Jan. 31, 2025, witness murder in Colombia.<\/p>\n
Wedding, the case’s lead defendant, is accused of overseeing the operations of a criminal enterprise — including by engaging in witness intimidation tactics such as murder — and enriching himself with the enterprise’s laundered drug proceeds. In March 2025, Wedding was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List.<\/p>\n
“Ryan Wedding’s athletic drive snowballed into a life of violence and, instead of conquering mountains, he mastered a deadly drug distribution enterprise,” Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles bureau, said in November.<\/p>\n
Wedding competed in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n
If convicted, Wedding — and the defendants charged in connection with the murder — could face life in federal prison, according to federal prosecutors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORANGE COUNTY, CA \u2014 Arraignment is expected Monday in Santa Ana for accused drug lord Ryan Wedding, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-149456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}