The FBI's most wanted fugitive in the top ten most wanted was the Olympic snowboarder during another chapter in his life. Now he is fleeing as suspected of drug kingpin and murderer.
The wedding of former Canadian Olympian Ryan has been added to the FBI's most wanted fugitive list, and the agency is offering him $10 million to anyone.
He also claims he coordinated and attempted multiple murders.
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He even reportedly acquired an ex-wife who was involved in trouble along the way.
Let's take a look at how a former snowboarder has become one of the most dangerous criminals in the world.
Childhood
The wedding was born in 1981 in the town of Thunder Bay, Ontario.
It was once known for the shipment of lumber and grain via boats and rail, but the shipping industry declined in the 70s and 80s around the time weddings were born, thanks to the development of highways that allowed trucking in Canada.
The town has since become one of the most crime-filled towns in the country. From 2012 to 2014 and 2016 to 2019, Thunder Bay had the highest per capita homicide rate in Canadian cities, according to the census.
Views of Thunder Bay, Ontario from Hillcrest Park. (Educational Images/Universal Image Group via Getty Images)
The wedding came from the skier's family. His father, Rene, was an engineer and skied in college. His mother, Karen, had a brother who skied for the Canadian national team. My grandparents at the wedding ran down a small ski hill in town.
And when weddings pursued winter sports, he quickly showed the traits that were often necessary for both competitive athletes and ruthless criminals.
“He had no fear,” former national champion ski racer Bobby Allison told Rolling Stone Writer Jesse Hyde in 2009 that he was married to Jesse Hyde.
“A lot of kids say they want to go fast, but they really don't want to go fast. They hold back something because there's a bit of a risk of falling there. Ryan didn't have that.”
Early athletic career
Around 1991, the wedding family moved to the Pacific coast from Thunder Bay in Coquitram, British Columbia, less than an hour from Vancouver. Coquitlam is a town with a lower crime rate than the average in Canada. However, the town's biggest crime problem is “people who use or handle drugs” at a rate of 40.85 out of 120. According to Numbereo.
There, the wedding was quick to excel in snowboarding, winning her first race at the age of 12. Just three years later, at the age of 15, he was part of Canada's national snowboarding team and began traveling the world regularly for competitions. According to Rolling Stone, Rene Wedding paid all the money for joining Ryan's team, spending around $40,000.
The young snowboarder was reportedly “famous” in perfecting snowboarding techniques, and used his father's engineering skills to try out his boots and snowboard modifications.
Olympic
After missing the 1998 Winter Olympics, the wedding qualified for his first and only Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002.
But the natural talent, fearlessness and obsession of the wedding were not enough to lead him to the podium.
His only event, the male parallel giant slalom, the wedding ended in 24th place. Swiss Philip Shock won the gold, Sweden's Richard Ricardson won the silver, and US's Chris Krug won the bronze.
Ryan's wedding at the 2002 Olympics in Canada. (Tony Marshall/Entics by Getty Images)
With the bronze medal, Klug “has set up his own foundation dedicated to promoting life-saving organs and tissue donations and improving the quality of life for those exposed to the donations.
With no medals available, the wedding took a very different path after Salt Lake City.
Early criminal behavior
After the Olympics, the wedding was registered with Simon and Frasier University in Vancouver.
In the early 2000s, Vancouver rose to be one of the world's illegal marijuana capitals. The drug was not legalized, but it was also a low priority for law enforcement agencies, and the influx of “Grey Territory” cannabis stores, an official business that illegally sold marijuana under the guise of a different purpose.
Gang activity related to the drug reportedly rose in the city from 2002 to 2009. Multiple reports have revealed that gangs known as “Red Scorpions”, “Independence Soldiers” and “Wolf Pack Alliances” have emerged, and handling marijuana has been suspected of gang's top-notch activity and income.
According to the Vancouver Sun, he and another competitive snowboarder have been appointed to the search warrant of the house in Maple Ridge, British Columbia.
Police seized 6,800 marijuana plants from the home, but no one was charged.
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First prison sentence and mystical marriage
He was first arrested in the United States in 2009 after traveling with two friends from Vancouver to California to buy 24 kilograms of Columbia cocaine.
The FBI determined that he was working for Vancouver's drug lord at the time.
That year, the city was left to gang war with multiple shootings related to gang violence, according to multiple reports. The suspects involved included Vancouver chapters of Independent Soldiers, Sangera Crime Family, Butal Crime Family, United Nations Gang, Red Scorpion and Hell's Angels.
On May 16, 2009, she sobbed at the memory of 17-year-old Mathea Angelica Sturm, two high school classmates who were shot and killed on a computer at her home in Abbotsford, British Columbia. (Getty Images)
That year, police responded to reports of more than 30 shootings.
“Don't make yourself a child. There's a gang war, and it's brutal,” then Vancouver police chief Jim Chu told CBC.
When the wedding was attempted, he claimed he was volunteering for several cancer institutions, investing in real estate, and training for the 2010 Olympics. But the Canadian Snowboard Federation said he hadn't competed for years, according to the Vancouver Sun.
Wedding was sentenced to four years in prison after agreeing to confiscate more than $121,000 seized during airport stab wounds and agreeing to stop appealing his conviction.
More than a year after his sentence, the wedding had his own wedding behind the bar. He married an Iranian-born businessman in British Columbia, located in the Reeves County Detention Center in West Texas, according to the CBC.
The unnamed woman said the wedding allegedly claimed that he was convicted for being “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
According to CBC, she said.
The women were subsequently named in multiple money laundering and temptation surveys. Although she has denied involvement in criminal activities, her name has emerged on allegations of an international money laundering scheme tied to a Mexican drug cartel.
The wedding and the women are no longer together. She says they have not spoken in recent years and that she remarried on a CBC basis.
Become a kingpin
Not long after the wedding was released from prison before authorities cracked down on him again.
In 2015 he was charged with a new drug offence in Nova Scotia. At that time, the police did not arrest him. He has been a fugitive ever since.
US investigators believe the wedding was protected by the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel and resumed human trafficking shortly after his release from prison. Federal authorities first issued a wedding arrest warrant in September 2024, but he has not yet been arrested.
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The wedding is also believed to have traveled through aliases “Elgeff”, “Giant”, “Public Ainming”, “James Conrad King” and “Jesse King”, and is estimated to have transported more than $1 billion in cocaine.
The wedding and suspects of Andrew Clark, who was arrested in October and handed over last week, have been accused of coordinating Ontario murders in “retaliation for stolen drug shipments that passed through Southern California.”
The FBI and Royal Canadian Cavalry Police argued for a wedding, with Clark adjusting for a November 2023 double murder involving an innocent couple in a false identity murder in Ontario. FBI.
Wedding and Clark are also accused of adjusting the murders of others over drug debt in May.
FBI Los Angeles chief Akil Davis said at a press conference Thursday that the wedding trafficking ring “everyday shipping hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Columbia to Mexico, Southern California, Canada and elsewhere in the United States, organising multiple murders and attempting to further murders of these drug registrations.
“The alleged murder of his competitors will make the wedding a very dangerous man and, coupled with a major reward offer by the State Department, will reveal his partner, along with a list of the 10 most wanted fugitives, so that he can catch up with him before putting anyone else in danger,” Davis added.
Investigators believe the wedding resides in Mexico, but have not ruled out that he is in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and more.
Murder and criminal enterprise charges for weddings carry the mandatory minimum penalty for life in federal prisons.
