The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - The Fall Of Canadian Cocaine King RYAN WEDDING: How The Drug Lord Was BETRAYED By The Sinaloa Cartel

Episode Date: March 1, 2026

From Olympic snowboarder to one of the biggest cocaine traffickers in North American history — this is the unbelievable story of Ryan Wedding. In this episode, Johnny breaks down how a privileged Canadian athlete went from chasing gold medals to running a billion-dollar cocaine empire alongside some of the most powerful cartels in the world. You’ll hear how Wedding built a massive trafficking network stretching from Colombia to Mexico, the U.S., and Canada… how his operation moved tens of tons of cocaine every year… and how a series of murders, informants, and arrests finally brought his empire crashing down. The episode also dives into the mystery surrounding his 2026 arrest — including shocking claims about a fake Instagram account, possible cooperation with authorities, and the question everyone is asking: 👉 Did he surrender… or was he secretly captured? This is one of the wildest narco stories of the modern era — a rise fueled by ambition, psychology, and perfect timing in the global drug trade. Topics covered: -Ryan Wedding’s life before crime -His rise in Canada’s drug underworld -Connections to major cartels -Billion-dollar trafficking operations -Murders linked to his organization -The investigation that took him down -Theories about his dramatic arrest This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: Cheers Health! Same night out — way better morning with Cheers. For a limited time our listeners are getting 20% off their entire order by using code CONNECT at https://CheersHealth.com #Cheers #ad Mars Men! For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off FOR LIFE, Free Shipping, AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men at https://mengotomars.com Superpower! Head to https://superpower.com and use code CONNECT at checkout for $20 off your membership. Live up to your 100-Year potential. #superpowerpod Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 00:00 Ryan Wedding: The Biggest Canadian Narco 01:52 From Olympic Dreams to the Drug World 03:39 The Birth of a Drug Empire in Vancouver 05:47 This Episode Is Sponsored By Cheers Health 07:45 Rise and Fall of the Weed King 08:38 Transition Into Cocaine Smuggling 10:26 Arrest, Courtroom Drama & Prison Lessons 12:03 Support Your Testosterone With Mars Men 14:45 Model Prisoner to Drug Kingpin 16:46 Rebuilding the Network in Montreal & Cartel Connections 19:43 Take Your Health Back With Superpower 22:08 On the Run in Mexico 24:01 Wedding's Massive Cocaine Operation 26:41 Unraveling: Murders, Police Crackdowns, Digital Slips 28:58 Arrests, Betrayals & Inside Jobs 31:44 The Fall of the Wedding Organization 33:36 Final Moves & The Fake Instagram Saga 36:35 Speculation, Conspiracies & Theories 38:18 The Man Behind the Empire 40:54 What's Next for Ryan Wedding 42:44 Will Wedding Cooperate or Stand Tall? 43:02 A Story for the Ages – Closing Thoughts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You survived the Miami weekend, nailed the speech, and maxed out your credit card in the name of friendship. Now you've got one hangover, four pastel dresses, and zero reasons to wear them again. Sell them on Deepop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. And you at least get some of your dignity, money back.

Someone on Deepop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Deepop where taste recognizes taste. The biggest news in the world of Narcos lately has been the arrest of Ryan Wedding, the Canadian drug kingpin who ran a billion dollar a year cocaine empire while living in exile in Mexico. Over the past 18 months, Wedding has become the most infamous non-Mexican drug trafficker in the world, and definitely in the history of North America. He had a $15 million bounty on his head by the U.S. Department of Justice,

and this dork, Cash Patel, calling him the modern-day Pablo Escobar. I wouldn't go that far, but he was unquestionably the biggest narco Canada has ever seen. And then, as if to heighten his already legendary outlaw status, in January of this year, Wedding posted a photo of himself to his Instagram account, evidently turning himself into a federal police station in Mexico City. And the next day, he was on a DEA plane to California, where he's currently being held without bail while he fights his case. So who is Ryan Wedding, really?

And how did he manage to go from Olympic's snowboarder and small-time pot dealer to the largest single importer of cocaine the United States and Canada have ever seen. And what happens next? Can he beat his case? Or at least the most serious of the charges like murder and furtherance of a drug crime and running a continual criminal enterprise? And why did he turn himself in? Is he already cooperating? We know most of these kingpins do. And could that have something to do with the 37 high-ranking cartel members who got extradited to the U.S. on January 20th? Just two days before wedding surrendered? Maybe he's been working with authorities this whole time, all of these years he's

been on the run, and now finally he's outlived his usefulness. There's so much to unpack with this, you guys. Leave your comments below, and now let's get into it. The most fascinating narco-gringo in history, Ryan Wedding, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. When it comes to success in any field, timing is everything, but that's especially true in the drug game, and Ryan Wedding was the benefactor of exceptional timing. He got his start way back in 2002 when he was 21 years old. He'd just blown his snowboarding dreams at the Winter Olympics in Park City, Utah, where his teammates say that a snap of bad weather during one of his runs caused him to get rattled, and he finished a disappointing 24th place in the men's giant slalom competition. And this must have been

incredibly difficult for young Ryan. Remember, his lifelong dream was to become a professional snowboarder and to win a medal for Canada in the Olympics. He grew up snowboarding from a very young age. In fact, his grandparents owned a ski hill in Ontario. Former teammates described him as focused, driven, and highly competitive. And that makes sense. This guy wants to be the best at everything he does. He's got that kind of personality. So to watch his dreams go up and smoke like that in an instant must have been heartbreaking. So after the Olympics, he gives up on snowboarding and relocates back to his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. And at this time, he doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. He briefly enrolls at Simon Fraser University and was apparently studying to become an engineer

like his father. But to make a little extra money, he starts working as a bouncer at Vancouver nightclubs that are frequented by gangsters from the Canadian underworld. Now, I know what you're thinking. Gangsters and Canada sounds like an oxymoron, but I promise you, Canada has some badass criminals. You see, organized crime is basically dead in the United States, but it's thriving in Canada, partly because of the lenient sentencing guidelines and also because the Canadian federal government lacks the RICO-style anti-mafia laws that dismantled organized crime here in the U.S. And in Vancouver, BC, you've got Chinese mafia, Russian mafia, Persian mafia, Hells Angels bikers, and crazy-ass Indian gangs.

And apparently, young Ryan becomes enamored of this whole scene. And as a bouncer, you get to know a lot of people, obviously. Everybody wants to be your friend, so you'll let them in. And these Vancouver gangsters are probably slipping Ryan $100 bills, so he'll let them skip the line, and this is where he first starts making contacts. Now, at this time in the early 2000s, the weed business in Canada was booming, and Vancouver, BC was the epicenter. This was the BC Bud era.

If you're my age or older, you'll remember this. This is when thousands and thousands of large indoor and greenhouse growing operations dotted the Vancouver metropolitan area. Millions of dollars were being made every day from shipping in bulk to the eastern provinces of Canada as well as into the United States. Although I'm sure Ryan got started selling small time hand-to-hand just like every drug dealer, being a competitive guy, he probably realized just how big this thing could get. And keep in mind, he's from a good family, an affluent family. His father owned his own engineering company and his mother was a nurse, and at the time he was attending one of the most expensive universities in the country.

In fact, his father gave him a half a million dollar loan to get started in the real estate business. Of course he didn't have to sell drugs. But Ryan is a thrill seeker. Think about it. He spent his whole childhood snowboarding. He craves the adrenaline. There was no way he was going to settle for an ordinary square life. And what's interesting about that is it characterizes a lot of the players in the Vancouver BC underworld.

They actually come from middle class and upper middle class families. That just shows you how goofy Canadians are. They're a bunch of bored suburban kids cosplaying as gangsters. But as you'll see, Ryan takes this cosplay to a whole different level. So by 2004, Wedding has dropped out of Simon Fraser and is getting his fledgling drug empire off the ground. To the outside world and to his parents, he was a real estate speculator, a house flipper.

But you can guess what was going on inside of those houses. You guys, I love drinking. I do. I love going out there and tying one on. Unwinding with a couple of drinks after a long week. I bet you do too. What's the worst part about that, though? It's the next day, right? It's a nightmare, especially in my 40s. Just a couple of alcoholic drinks can crush my sleep. Dehydrates me. It's bad for my liver. You just feel unhealthy. That's why I take Cheers Restore. Cheers Restore is a dual action after alcohol aid. Its ingredients support. both your brain and your liver after consuming alcohol. And it does more than just combat dehydration. Cheers was designed for how alcohol actually affects your body. It was made by some Princeton students. So if that tells you anything, Princeton, dorks who like to drink, okay? This stuff really works.

They appeared on Shark Tank, and today they're sold in more than 30,000 stores, including Walgreens, CVS, 711, and Circle K. Cheers is backed by doctors, PhDs, and over 1,000 verified clinicians who share it with their patience. Here's their guarantee. Here's Cheers simple promise to you. You'll feel about 50% better the next day or your money back. Basically, two drinks will feel like one the next morning. That's pretty awesome. So, if you got a high tolerance, you can go have five and it'll really only be like two and a half. Okay? All you do is take three capsules after your last drink or before bed. This isn't college binge drinking. If you have 12 tequila shots, you'll probably still feel rough the next day.

Oh, damn. If you're a normal adult, responsibly having two, three, or four drinks, you'll feel significantly better with Cheers. So there you have it, folks. Same night out, way better morning with Cheers. For a limited time, our listeners are getting 20% off their entire order by using Code Connect at CheersHealth.com. Just head to Cheershealth.com at Use CodeConnect, C-O-N-N-E-C-T for 20% off.

And after your purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that we sent you. By 2005, Wedding is running a massive 8,000 plant marijuana grow on a farm owned by a friend of his in the town of Maple Ridge, just outside of Vancouver. Every couple weeks, he and his business partner would harvest a round of plants and sell them to a pot broker, with each of them netting hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. But then in 2006, Ryan took a loss when the RCMP, which is Canada's version of the DEA, rated the farm and seized nearly 7,000 marijuana plants and 100,000 marijuana plants and 100,000. hundreds of pounds of manicured bud. The estimated value was $10 million. Now, Ryan wasn't at the property at the time of the raid,

and authorities decided they didn't have enough evidence to charge him criminally, but there's no doubt that this put a big dent in his pockets. By 2007, he was complaining to friends that his money was running low, and that probably led him to make the move that would change his life forever. I'm talking about cocaine, ladies and gentlemen. Remember how I told you that everything in the drug game is timing and circumstance? Well, Canada at that time was opening up as a very important cocaine market. Chapo Guzman from the Sinaloa cartel loved it.

It was so much easier to infiltrate than the United States. It was easier for Mexicans to travel there. Canadian law enforcement was slow and bureaucratic, and the wholesale price of a kilo of cocaine was at least $10,000 higher than in the U.S. If a key went for 25 in Chicago, it could sell for 35 in Toronto. Canada also has enormous, sparsely populated landmasses on both coasts, which make for attractive maritime smuggling routes. And as you'll soon see, young Ryan took advantage of all of this. Canada was prime to have its first real drug lord.

But back in 2007, Ryan still hadn't met the plug. So, when he got approached by a prominent Russian mobster and an Iranian money launderer about going in on a 24-kilo Coke deal in San Diego, California, he took the bank. But as it turns out, the person selling them the kilos was an undercover DEA agent, and Ryan and his co-dees got arrested and were now facing serious Fed time. And this is where we see a little bit of the psychopath, megalomaniac side of Ryan Wedding start to manifest. First of all, the DEA agents who arrested him said he showed no fear whatsoever, only defiance, which is extremely rare, even for a career criminal. Secondly, wiretaps of Ryan's conversation from the MDC jail in San Diego to his

his associates back in Canada reveal a guy who was not only not afraid of going to jail, but who was actually excited by all the cartel contacts he was making. I'm making a bunch of good connections he was heard bragging about to his friend over the phone. And this makes sense. MDC San Diego is crawling with low-level cartel people, usually drug runners and human smugglers from Tijuana who got busted at the border. This is where Ryan would have started making inroads with the Sinoa cartel, who at that time had just taken over Tijuana from,

the long-standing Ariano-Falek's cartel. Another thing that made Ryan stand out from ordinary drug traffickers is that unlike his co-defendants who both pled out and received minimal prison sentences, Ryan took his case all the way to trial. Now, if you know anything about the federal system, you'll know what an insane move that is. The feds had him dead to rights talking over a wiretap. Trust me, they've convicted people for a lot less. But this is typical of sociopathic narcissistic behavior, an inflated ego and the belief that the rules don't apply to them, Ryan may have already started believing he was untouchable. But of course, he was convicted and sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison.

But at the last minute, the judge reduced his sentence to just four years. Like most reasonable people from the outside looking in, she saw a young man from a good family who made a stupid mistake and who surely didn't need a decade behind bars to learn his lesson. She could not have been more wrong. It's possible that if Ryan had done the full 10 years, he would have thrown his hands up and said, okay, I'm done.

I can't risk doing any more time in a place like this. But after he lucked up and got special treatment from the judge, he probably thought to himself, okay, this is meant to be. I'm going to use this time to learn the cocaine business and become the biggest kingpin Canada has ever seen. And that's exactly what happened. All right, this message is for all my dudes out there.

I mean, the biggest rage now is trying to figure out how we can maintain high testosterone, strength, energy, but without having to push a needle in our ass, like testosterone replacement therapy, right? Like, we all know that's bad for you. You know what I'm saying? And you've got to get shots for the rest of your life when you do that. And it's expensive to boot. And if you stop doing it, guess what? You're back to square one.

That's why you got to go check out Mars Men. Now I really like this company Marsman. They're based here in Austin. And they're just supplements. There's supplements that do the exact same thing that expensive TRT or peptides would do. And it's all just natural ingredients. It's a few things I can't pronounce plus zinc, boron, and more. It's stuff that supports healthy tea levels, stamina, and recovery.

And to be honest, I'm horny as a jackrabbit when I take these as well. So I'm working out, feeling great. my cognitive levels are firing on all cylinders. I'm getting stronger and healthier. These also give me great sleep. Let me put that in there. I feel great when I take these in the morning. I sleep like a baby at night.

Plus, I got a rock hard, you know what. So if you want to feel as good as I do, but without having to spend the money and go through the pain and the risk of testosterone replacement therapy or similar things like it, You got to go support Mars Men, okay? And again, this is not some sketchy Chinese company. This is made in the USA.

Mars Men is based here in Austin, where we record this fine podcast. And check it out. They've got a 90-day money-back guarantee, so there's no risk. Worst case, you don't absolutely love it. You get your money back. But over 91% of users report higher energy levels. They love it. Thousands of guys are feeling incredible results.

Just check out the reviews on the website to see for yourself. and check it out. This is a crazy offer we're giving you guys right now. For a limited time, our listeners get 50, 50% off for life, plus free shipping and three free gifts at men go to Mars.com. Wow, you get half off for life, dude. It's a perfect way to kick off the new year strong. So go to men go to Mars, men go to Mars.com for 50% off and three free gifts when you check out. And after you purchase, please support our show and let them know that we sent you. Once again, that's men go to mars.com for 50% off. That's unbelievable. Thank you, Mars, man. What I find so fascinating about him was the complete disregard he had for his family and the

community who stood behind him. While he was locked up at MDC, his parents came to visit him all the time, and his former teammates and snowboarding coaches wrote character references to the judge on his behalf. They really loved this guy and wanted to give him a second chance. And this is where most drug dealers from middle class, normal backgrounds would have retired. Like me, for example, I grew up similar to Ryan Wedding. Both my parents had good jobs. I had great friends and a great community. And when I got locked up, they really stood behind me. They gave me so much support. So even though I knew I could have gotten back in the game and been an even bigger dealer after I got out of prison, I didn't do it because I didn't want to let my loved ones down. I didn't want every

one I knew to turn their back on me if and when I got caught again. But that's what separates me and most people from a guy like Ryan Wedding. The dude is crazy. And for men, our mid to late 20s is when our personality really forms, so any untreated antisocial character traits come to the surface around this time. So from 2009 to 2011, Ryan serves out his sentence at the Reeves Federal Correctional Institute, a low-security prison in Texas, which houses mostly undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes in the U.S.

That meant a lot more Mexicans and possibly other Canadian criminals for Ryan to network with and learn from. I also found it interesting to learn that he got no write-ups while he was locked up. He was kind of a model prisoner. And I think that speaks to his character and his career as a drug lord. He never committed violence or harmed anybody. He always was calling the shots. So while he was locked up at Reeves, he wasn't think about any foolishness.

He wasn't into drugs. He certainly wasn't using drugs. he wasn't selling drugs, he was studying. So in 2011, he gets out and gets deported back to Canada, and he relocates to Montreal, Quebec, the capital of organized crime in Canada. Young Ryan was all grown up and ready for the big time. By all accounts, he got busy right away.

Now, at the beginning, he wouldn't have had the bank roll to organize and fund large shipments directly into the country, so what he likely did was start out as a cocaine broker. He knew cartel connects he'd met in prison who could get product into the country, and Ryan could introduce them to buyers and take a fee. It only took him a few years before he was importing 1,000 kilos shipments from the Caribbean all the way up the Atlantic seaboard and into the clandestine waterways and deserted coastlines of Quebec and Newfoundland. This kind of smuggling is highly sophisticated and highly risky. It requires cooperation

from a lot of people, from boat captains, from the fishermen who unload the product in the open ocean, and drive it onto land, and truck drivers. and couriers who deliver it safely to the stash houses in Montreal. But Ryan was a natural leader and had the ability to direct and impose his will on others. There's no evidence he ever broke down a kilo of coke or harmed anyone himself. He ordered others to do it, as only a boss would. Now, sometime during this period, he becomes close with another Montreal drug trafficker named Filipos Coyados, who, according to court records, had ties to drug lord Chapo Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel.

cartel. I think we can safely assume that this is how Ryan meets his contacts in the Sinaloa cartel and how he was able to escape to Mexico so easily after he went on the run a few years later. And keep in mind, at this time, Wedding would have been building up his infrastructure, his couriers, his routes, his stash houses, and his distributors in every major cocaine market in Canada, from Quebec City to Montreal to Toronto, all the way west to Calgary, Edmonton, and his hometown of Vancouver, BC. Everything was falling into place for him, and then, finally, he meets the plug from Sinaloa. It's also likely that he'd already made contacts with Colombian cartels,

as he'd been smuggling in cocaine from the Atlantic via the Caribbean, which is obviously not a Mexican cartel route. They don't do maritime smuggling. In 2015, Felipe's Coyaros introduced wedding to a sailboat broker who was planning on bringing in 1,000 kilos from the Bahamas to be unloaded in Newfoundland. Coyaros introduced wedding as, quote, the boss. But unbeknownst to him, the sailboat broker was an undercover federal agent. In April of that year, the RCMP conducted raids all over Canada as part of a nationwide indictment.

They came knocking on Ryan's door, but somebody had apparently tipped him off because he was already gone, vanished without a trace. Once again, this guy had dodged a bullet. His former partner, Felipe's Coyados, was not so lucky. After serving a two-year prison sentence, he was gunned down in Montreal in 2018. Nobody was ever arrested for the murder. We can't be sure, but it's possible that Wedding ordered the hit, perhaps believing that Coyados was working with the police.

This would be Ryan Wedding's first foray into the murder game, but certainly not his last. You guys, I'm really trying to get healthy this year, but I hate going to the doctor and I don't even have insurance. I hate the whole medical bureaucracy, and most of us do, right? the medical system, the health care system in America is a nightmare. That is why I cannot recommend this company enough. That's our partner, superpower. Superpower is a telehealth company. It's essentially a mobile doctor.

And what they do is you can either go into the lab or you can have a licensed professional sent out to your house like I had here in Austin. I had somebody come out and actually draw my blood. And then what they'll do is they send your blood work in to get it tested. They tested my blood work for 100 different biomarkers, everything from heart, liver, thyroid, hormones, metabolism, vitamin, and mineral levels, and even environmental toxins. And what they were able to do is tell me why I feel like shit all the time. They were able to say, hey, look at, you're low on this, you need to improve your sleep, you need to do improve your nutrition, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

They actually, based off of my biomarkers from the blood draw, they actually gave me a nutritional guidance framework. work. Okay, they even recommended different vitamins and supplements that I could take that they sell. And not only that, they have an on-demand clinician team to answer any questions that I have. It's like having a doctor on speed dial. But the best part to me is, of course, the product, the service, it's the price. Superpower used to cost $500. Now it's just $199 for the full experience. That's more affordable than anything else out there. You go to these other blood testing service companies, They charge $500,000 sometimes. Superpower is undercutting them by like three quarters.

You know what I mean? It's cheaper. It's cheaper than having health insurance. It's cheaper than going to the doctor. It's cheaper than going to the leading blood draw companies. Make this the year you stop guessing about your health with superpower. Not only did superpower reduce their price to just $199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off.

with Code Connect. Head to Superpower.com and use code C-O-N-N-E-C-T at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask you how you heard about them. So make sure to mention this podcast to support the show. Thank you, Superpower. So now he's on the run. Probably tucked away safely in a gated mansion in Mexico City and under the protection of the Sinaloa Cartel. This is where the networking he'd done for the past four years across Canada paid off. He had his lieutenants, his distributors, and his couriers all lined up. He'd also managed to put together an impressive network of stash houses throughout the Los Angeles area,

where his couriers would receive the product after it made it across the border from Tijuana. Now he just needed the cartel's product and their protection to get it there safely. Now, we don't know for certain what faction of the Sinaloa cartel he was working with, the Choppos or the Mayo's, but we have a pretty good guess. Back in 2016, when wedding first got to Mexico, Chapo Guzman had escaped from prison again and was about to be recaptured and finally extradited to the United States.

So it's unlikely that he ever did business directly with Wedding. But it's highly likely that his sons did. Remember, wedding was first introduced to lieutenants from the Chapo faction of the Sinaloa cartel by Philippe Coyaros while he was living in Montreal. So it stands to reason that he stayed in touch and built his own relationship with them. By 2016, as Chapo fell, his oldest son, Ivan Archivaldo, stepped in and took the business over from his father. Because the Chapisa at the time ruled in Tijuana and Baja, California at large, we can say with a high degree of probability that they were the ones supplying wedding. So now it's on. Wedding is either fully or partially funding the Coke shipments from South America into Mexico using the routes established by the cartel.

We also know that he was personally connected. to paramilitary groups and guerrillas in Colombia, who he would source the cocaine from. So this guy was vertically integrated. This is what made him extra special and extra rich. A lot of white guys have worked with the cartel, but few have done it side by side with them in Mexico. Brian was paying the Mexican price, probably $4,000 to $6,000 a kilo, and selling them for 25 or 30 in Canada. Even after the cartel taxes and transport fees, he's personally, clearing close to $20 million off of each ton that he moves, and he moved up to 60 tons a year.

That's 132,000 kilos a year times, let's just say on the low end to be conservative, $18,000 a kilo. That's $2,376 million in annual revenue every single year, and he did that for 10 years. mind-blowing. This guy basically single-handedly dropped the price of cocaine in Canada. That's why he was able to own a $60 million fleet of motorcycles or pay $12 million for an ultra-classic James Bond Mercedes. And most importantly, that was the reason he was able to stay free for so long. $2 billion a year buys a lot of goodwill in Mexico. And to think, he managed all of this from an encrypted phone, along with his right-hand man and childhood friend Ryan Clark, who relocated to Mexico from Canada in 2022 to help Wedding run the business.

Then there were these two dudes, Hardip Rott and Gupreet Singh, the owners of a long-haul trucking company based in Brampton, Ontario. These were the smugglers who would dispatch their truck drivers down to Los Angeles to meet with Weddings managers to collect the cocaine, stash it in secret compartments in the trucks, and drive it back to Canada. The DEA indictment says one truck could fit up to 350 kilos at a time. from which Rot and Singh were paid a flat fee of $220,000. Once the cocaine made it across the border into Canada, it was handed over to a network of criminal organizations for distribution,

most notably the Hells Angels, and a group called the Wolfpack, which is a loose affiliation of trafficking clans based out of the Toronto area. And it appears that most of the drug money was being moved around via cryptocurrency. The indictment doesn't say specifically, but I have to assume it's the most expensive coins, coins, Ethereum and Bitcoin. A few of these crypto wallets seized by the government unveil the extent of the wedding enterprise. $250 million sent via cryptocurrency over three months' time from just

one Canadian trafficking group moving weddings cocaine. That's just one group doing almost a billion dollars a year. Everyone in Wedding's orbit was eating. And what's wild about this whole thing is that wedding was operating essentially out in the open for years. The Canadian Feds weren't even looking for him. As late as 2024, he and Ryan Clark were spotted at a Starbucks in a trendy neighborhood in Mexico City. It wasn't until the bodies started to pile up that young Ryan came on the radar of the DEA. In 2023, an Indian couple who was visiting their daughter in Vancouver, B.C., was shot to death inside of her house by a masked assailant. Although the shooter was never arrested, it's believed that Wedding ordered the hit. Turns out that house was owned by a shady trucking company,

to Wedding's organization and whose owner had run off with a load of Wedding's cocaine in Los Angeles months before the murder. That's right. The dead Indian couple had been victims of mistaken identity. Then there's the case of Randy Fader, a 29-year-old mid-level drug dealer living in Niagara Falls, Ontario. He was outside his house on the evening of April 1st, 2024, when someone jumped out of an SUV and shot him to death. And this is where things really begin to unravel for Ryan Wedding and his crew. Two weeks after the murder of Fader, Toronto police pulled over their suspect and found 9mm shell casings, $100,000 in cash, and most importantly, an encrypted cell phone with the app called Threema, where they discovered all of the text messages discussing the murder of Randy Fader. Inside this Threma chat, the shooter, who identified himself as Mr. Perfect, was taking orders from someone named Meroero. Turns out, this Mr. Meroero was none other than Ryan Clark.

Check this shit out. Clark had flown Mr. Perfect, a 23-year-old kid identified as Malik Cunningham, down to Mexico to do weapons training with some cartel cicadios a few months before the murders took place. He was literally grooming this kid to kill. Also inside of the encrypted messages, police not only linked Ryan Clark and Cunningham to two other murders in the Toronto area, but they found a full-on hit list of everyone who Clark wanted dead. This included, end quote, $200,000 for a realtor in Vancouver, more than twice that amount for some Arab brothers in Toronto,

and $1 million for a target in Dubai. Wow, this was a huge break for police, and all because this dumbass Mr. Perfect forgot to delete his texts. So now the feds basically have Ryan Wedding's number two man, Ryan Clark, caught, Guilty. In October of 24, the Mexican Navy arrested Ryan Clark in the Ritzie Urupa neighborhood of Guadalajara in the state of Halisco. Now, this is interesting to me for two reasons. One, the fact that he was arrested by the Mexican Navy. You see, in Mexico, the Navy is usually only called out to arrest narco suspects if they believe the state or federal cops have been

compromised. Clearly, Wedding and Clark had been paying off almost every level of the police. But Secondly, the fact that Clark was in Guadalajara is intriguing. That's the headquarters of the Halisco New Generation Cartel, bitter rivals of the Sinaloa Cartel. It's possible that he and Wedding were moving product with both organizations, which just goes to show you the depth of their reach and their connections. In March 2025, Ryan Clark pled not guilty and is currently awaiting trial in Los Angeles.

The million dollar question is, will he flip on his boy Ryan Wedding? If he doesn't, prosecutors could have, have a tough time proving that all of these murders were at the behest of wedding, in which case, Ryan Clark will take the fall and almost certainly be looking at life in prison. And then there's the case of Jonathan Acevedo Garcia, a native Colombian raised in Montreal, who Wedding had met while they were both serving Fed time in Texas. Acevedo Garcia was a major trafficker within the wedding organization, but somehow the DEA got him to flip. He wore a wire during a meeting with

Ryan Wedding and Clark at the Starbucks in Mexico City, where the feds snapped that now infamous photo of wedding that circulated all around the world. And thanks to the help of Acevedo Garcia, the DEA was able to put together Operation Giant Slalom, the investigation where they seized hundreds of kilos of cocaine, $30 million, and arrested most of the key players in Weddings organization. Acevedo Garcia was set to be a key witness at the trial of Weddings Associates in May of 2025. The feds thought they could use Acevedo as leverage to get Wedding's associates to testify against Wedding once he was finally arrested. Evidently, Acevedo Garcia thought it would be a good idea to cool out in Medellin,

Colombia before the trial. He thought shit was sweet. But damn, dog, Colombia hasn't changed that much. On January 31st, 2025, while he was having lunch at the El Indio Mall in Medellin, a group of cicadios with silencers on their pistols ambushed him and shot. shot him dead. As it turns out, Ryan Wedding had posted Acevedo Garcia's photo to a website called TheDirtyNews.com, a crime blog where criminals converge to share information and that wedding used to get info about Acevedo's whereabouts as well as to solicit a hitman. Wow, this is

criminal activity in 2026. Out in the open, on the internet, where everyone can see it. It's almost like they were asking to get caught. Needless to say, pretty much Everyone involved in Acevedo Garcia's execution has been arrested. The shooters, the Colombian sex worker who located him, even the owners of the dirty news website right before the fed seized it and shut it down. Canadian authorities also arrested a prominent Ontario criminal defense attorney, nicknamed the cocaine lawyer, for allegedly advising wedding about the murder, telling him, end quote, if you kill this witness, the case will be dismissed.

As 2025 dragged on, the Domino's continued. continued falling around Ryan Wedding. The FBI increased their reward for him to $15 million, and bug-eyed Cash Patel, cashed there are no suspects in the Epstein Files, Patel, went on national TV and pronounced wedding the second coming of Pablo Escobar and Chapo Guzman. Then, in response to mounting pressure by the Trump administration,

Mexican President Claudia Shanebaum, whose Morena political party is notoriously tied to the Sinaloa cartel, began extraditing dozens and dozens of cartel leaders to the United States. The walls were closing in on Ryan Wedding. Everything in Mexico is about appearances, and the fact that the Mexican government couldn't catch a giant 6'3-Gringo living in Mexico City when his picture was circulating to millions of people around the world, well, that made them look a little too complicit.

Now, clearly Ryan knew this and began to make arrangements. In early January of 26, he began posting pictures of him, himself to a new Instagram account, photos of him getting on a helicopter, of his newly purchased motorcycles. He seemed to be taunting the feds. Then, on January 22nd, Wedding posted a photo of himself in front of a police station in Mexico City, ostensibly turning himself in. In the caption of that photo, he thanked his wife and a man named John Billinog, saying, end quote, he will be in charge of my legacy. He also tagged John's Instagram account. Now that man's real name is Genadie Bilanog, and he is one of the last remaining members of Wedding's crew to be apprehended.

It appeared that Wedding was letting all of his contacts and distributors know, hey, this guy, John, is taking over operations after I'm gone. And that same morning is when we saw Ryan Wedding all over the news being led off the DEA plane in California with media in tow and Cash Patel himself participating in the perpwalk. And as of this recording, Wedding is currently being held without bond at a federal jail in Santa Anna, California. Now here's where it really gets crazy. Two days after his alleged surrender, Wedding's lawyer made a statement to the press debunking these claims, saying that his client never turned himself in, but that he was captured. The DEA also claims he was captured,

but they are extremely vague and give no detail about how it happened. And then it came out that the Instagram account at Boss Ryan Wedding was actually AI. None of those picks were his, and the photo of him turning himself in was also AI generated. This is wild. And look, there are going to be so many theories circulating on the internet about what's really going on. And I know whatever I say, the comments will disagree with. So let me just offer a few possibilities, and you guys can speculate from there. Comment below about what you really think is happening.

Now, the first possibility is Wedding did turn himself in, and he made a deal with the American government in advance to cooperate against his cocaine suppliers, select cartel members, and of course, crooked Mexican politicians. His lawyer claiming he was captured could just be a defense tactic if and when he goes to trial. Now, the second possibility is he was captured by the DEA, but without the help of Mexican law enforcement. This would be a huge embarrassment to President Claudia Shanebaum. You see, Mexicans are very territorial, especially when it comes to gringoes coming onto their sovereign land and kidnapping or arresting suspects without their knowledge.

And obviously, we would be the same way, right, if the shoe were on the other foot. So if they found out about this, it's possible knowing Mexico that they could have created a fake IG account with all of these wedding photos, right? And then claiming that he turned himself in. Now, I think that's a little far-fetched creating a whole-ass fake IG account. but I definitely can see Shane Bomb and her political party saying, we're going to put out the statement that he actually surrendered and not let it leak that, wow, some DEA operatives

were able to sneak under the nose of all of our law enforcement, kidnap a guy, and get him out of the country without our knowledge. That's a huge political liability. I actually think this has the most legs when it comes to a theory about what really happened. It could also be a combination of both of those things. Look, the drug game at this level is so intertwined with law enforcement, with politics, with cooperation. It's possible that Ryan Wedding could have been working with the CIA, the DEA, for years. And now he's finally outlived his usefulness.

The Sinaloa cartel is on its last legs. Most of Choppos' kids who took the business over after he went to prison live in the United States now. ratted on the Mayo's, their organizations completely falling apart, they're at war. Maybe wedding had something to do with their arrest. And now that they're basically the non-superpower, the biggest power is the CJNG, maybe now it's time for Ryan to go face the music. Who knows, but we can't discount anything because anything, especially in Mexico, can and will happen.

But where did the fake Instagram account come from? I have an idea. Maybe. Maybe it's Janati or John Billenog himself, using it as a way to let the underworld know, hey, I'm the new boss now. Nothing stops this train. The product doesn't stop only the face behind it. What do you guys think? You guys, the saga of Ryan Wedding has been one of the most fascinating narco outlaw stories of the last 20 years. I would say not since Chappo himself has the media and the public at been so fascinated by a drug trafficker. And what I find so fascinating beyond just the logistics, the fact that from an encrypted cell phone somewhere in Mexico City,

he was able to move cocaine by the ton from jungles in Colombia to Mexico, across the border into the United States, and then all the way up into Canada. He's moving. That's like 8,000 miles. that he's trafficking 60 tons a year of cocaine to. It's absolutely mind-blowing, but beyond that is the man himself.

It's Ryan Wedding. It's a guy who grew up really as a spoiled kid. This is a guy whose snowboarding teammates say that when they were on the road, when they were teenagers, going to different events, going to different cities for snowboarding competitions, this was a guy who went to bed early with his teddy bear. Look it up. The motherfucker had a teddy bear. Yeah. So to go from competitive athlete and mama's boy,

spoiled kid, to a guy just brazenly out of control murdering people in furtherance of his billion dollar a year cocaine empire. It's fascinating psychologically. How do you get to that point? For me, I see it as identity, right? Yes, he's a psychopath, for sure. Like, neurologically, he had that in him. And it was an environmental factor, him losing the snowboarding competition, having no identity anymore,

especially for an athlete. An athlete who's given their whole childhood to a sport, when that dream just vanishes, it's overnight. You've lost your sense of identity, your sense of purpose. You don't know where to go. combined with that and his influence in the early days, looking at these middle and upper class gangsters shooting each other in Vancouver, BC,

and seeing them with the gangster lifestyle, the cars, the girls, the clothes, he fell in love with it. But it's just crazy that his family and his community and his friends, he could give a fuck. He said, I am about this life. I am going to ride it out until the end. And what's so fascinating to see is, what will be his sentence?

Because I think, you know, even though Acevedo Garcia, one of the key witnesses for the prosecution is dead, look, you've got his boy, uh, Ryan Clark, dead to rights over text messages, talking and ordering multiple murders, okay? You have Ryan Wedding himself, oftentimes directing cocaine traffic. Not all the time. Towards the end, there's, evidence that Ryan Clark was the one kind of putting himself in between wedding and the illicit

activities. But there's no doubt that Ryan himself directed much of the drug traffic, especially in the earlier years when he was living in Mexico. So if you know anything about the feds, if you get five guys on the stand saying, yes, this was the boss, this guy directed me to do it. I moved tons and tons and tons and tons for this guy. It's usually enough. It usually meets the standard, the burden of proof. So to me, the only question, the question is not, is he going to get convicted? It's, does he have enough information to make himself useful to law enforcement?

Everybody does it, guys. If Chapo and Mayo, the greatest of all time, the greatest to ever do it, If they give up information to the feds, you think Ryan Wedding won't? If he doesn't, he goes down in history. He's on the Mount Rushmore of drug traffickers. But I think we're going to see pretty soon that he's going to put his hand up and play ball. So we're going to tap in. We're going to pay attention to this case as it continues as it moves forward.

We're in the very early stages. I mean, he just got arrested last month. So this is going to be a year and a half to two, two year, maybe longer process. But this is a movie. This is a TV series. I hope you guys have enjoyed it. We'll tap in with you next week. My name is Johnny Mitchell.

Thank you for watching The Connect. Pay off your home. Travel for Life. Drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Bucks slot machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yombollah.

Yamava's history. Club's Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly.

Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. All right, class, settled down. Today's lesson is on the Argo Rewards app. Try to stay with me. The fundamentals are simple. Earn at least five cents a gallon in rewards, then redeem them later for up to a dollar off every gallon.

Now here's where it gets complicated. Oh, wait, it doesn't. It's as simple as downloading the ARCO Rewards app to get started. Class dismissed! Savings of up to $1 per gallon redeemable with $20 rewards dollars in your low of the account. At participating locations, terms and conditions apply.