Ryan Wedding, a former Olympic snowboarder, is set to appear in an Orange County courtroom for the first time this week following his arrest in Mexico and subsequent extradition to California.
Wedding faces several serious federal charges, including running a criminal enterprise, murder, and conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
According to officials, the Canadian athlete’s court appearance is scheduled for Monday in federal court in Santa Ana.
He was apprehended last week and brought back to Southern California on Friday, where he was seen in handcuffs. The FBI, along with the Los Angeles Police Department, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and Canada’s RCMP, held a joint press conference to announce his capture. It was noted that Wedding had once been one of America’s most wanted suspects.
“It takes a united front to go after someone like Ryan Wedding, and that’s what we see here,” remarked FBI Director Kash Patel.
Wedding has well-established connections to Southern California, and authorities indicate that Los Angeles served as a significant hub for his alleged drug-trafficking activities. Reports claim that his operation distributed hundreds of kilograms of cocaine across Southern California and also shipped it to Canada and other regions in the U.S.
Originally from Thunder Bay, Ontario, Wedding participated in the 2002 Winter Olympics. His first criminal encounter in California took place in 2008, leading to a conviction for conspiracy to traffic cocaine the following year, for which he received a four-year federal prison sentence.
Interestingly, a year after his sentencing in 2011, Wedding married a businessman from British Columbia, who was born in Iran.
Canadian law enforcement had been monitoring Wedding since 2015, and when he fled, the U.S. Department of Justice joined the pursuit. In June 2024, an unsealed six-count indictment was filed in Los Angeles, charging him and his associates with serious criminal offenses, including operating a criminal enterprise and conspiracy related to cocaine distribution.
Finally, on January 22, Wedding turned himself in at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, resulting in his arrest.
