The Current - After a decade on the run, Ryan Wedding has been arrested

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

Ryan Wedding, Canadian Olympian turned FBI’s most wanted has been caught in Mexico after years on the run, and faces charges for his alleged role in a murderous international drug crime network. We speak with CBC's Jorge Barrera, based in Mexico City, about how Wedding managed to evade authorities for so long, and what led to his capture. 

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. A former Canadian Olympian, one of the FBI's most wanted fugitives, is expected to make his first court appearance today in a California courtroom. Last week, after a decade on the run, Ryan Wedding surrendered to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. He's accused of murder and allegedly running a cocaine empire that brought drugs into the United States and Canada. He is a modern day El Chapo. He is a modern day, Pablo Escobar. And he thought he could evade justice. And here we are today bringing him to.

justice for trafficking hundreds of kilos of cocaine and also for the murder of innocent civilians. This individual and his organization in the Sinaloa cartel poured narcotics into the streets of North America and killed too many of our youth and corrupted too many of our citizens. And that ends today. It's FBI director Cash Patel speaking at a news conference on Friday on the tarmac at an airport where he was joined by Canadian officials. The CBC's Jorge Barrera has been following the story from Mexico. City. Jorge, good morning.

Good morning. Ryan Wedding was in custody last Thursday night in Mexico City. What do we know about how he ended up in handcuffs? Well, from what we understand at the moment is that U.S. authorities had actually made contact with Wedding many days before he walked into the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, and they were negotiating with him to turn himself in. and it seems that once U.S. authorities had reached some sort of agreement with wedding, FBI director Cash Patel then flew to Mexico City so he could be there for the surrender.

But it seems that Patel tried to make this event seem much more dramatic than the turnout to be. While he didn't reveal very much about the events that led to wedding surrendered during that press conference in Ontario, California, we just heard, He did offer more details later in a Vanity Fair interview. He told the magazine he was there on the ground with the FBI hostage rescue team for the complex high stakes operation, which he said had, quote, zero margin of error. And he said that the team was prepared to use, quote, significant force to get wetting. Now, this created problems for the Mexican government because it implied that U.S. authorities were operating on Mexican soil. But later that same day on Friday, the U.S. ambassadors to Mexico,

posted a statement confirming the original story that wedding surrendered at the U.S. embassy. Now, Mexican authorities were actually closing in on him, and it appears that wedding was running out of options. Mexican authorities announced raids of several properties connected to wedding in Mexico City and in the adjacent state of Mexico on Christmas Eve. They seized dozens of high-end motorbikes

worth about $40 million artwork and two Olympic medals, and in hindsight, it seems that the raids on these properties, properties were a direct hit on wedding and an indication that he was running out of runway. What do we know about that runway? How he managed to avoid arrest for 10 years. There was this $15 million reward that was hanging over his head. Whoever turned him in perhaps could cash a big check. How did he manage to avoid arrest? Well, wedding has been wanted by the RCMP since around 2015. And that's when he reportedly fled to Mexico. So I think the reason he was able to avoid capture in Mexico for so long was he had the protection of the Sinaloa cartel.

The cartel appears to have been his main cocaine supplier here. But also Mexico had much bigger capos to deal with than Mexico, like El Chapo. Remember, El Chapo was taken down in 2016 and in the summer of 2024. the other head of the Sinaloa cartel, Ismail El Mio Zimbada, was handed over to the U.S. in a, I guess, a betrayal by the sons of Joaquina El Chapo Guzman. And that sparked a civil war inside the cartel itself. But, you know, El Chapo and Amaya are much bigger deals in Ryan Wedding. And I spoke with a member of the Sunilua cartel last December.

And he said that he believed that wedding's profile was actually inflated by the U.S. to make a big splash whenever he was captured. And this cartel operative told us that he believed that U.S. authorities had already located Wedding and were just waiting for the right moment to pull the thread. And it seems he was right. Is your sense that perhaps somebody in the Sinaloa cartel betrayed Ryan Wedding turned him over? Kind of they were the ones who tipped officials off, that that's where he was? Yes.

So it seems that wedding was aligned with the... the chapitos, these are people who are loyal to El Chapo in this ongoing civil war within the civil war within a civil war cartel. And it appears that for reasons that, you know, I don't know, but it seems that they did pull their security blanket away from wedding. And once that happened, it left wedding exposed. And also a possible target of assassination,

not only from the enemies of Los Chapitos, but also Los Chapitos themselves because Wedding knows a lot of things. He knows about payoffs to people in the security establishment. He knows some details about the operation. And sometimes it's better to keep people silent when they know these types of things. So this is another reason that we've been told that wedding may have decided to turn himself into U.S. justice because he may not have trusted Mexican authorities not to do the bidding of someone in the shadows. We heard Cash Patel calling him a modern-day Pablo Escobar.

He's been called a modern-day El Chapo. They call him El Hefe. What do we know about how extensive this drug operation was that he is accused of running? Well, Wedding did have a direct pipeline, a cocaine pipeline that was moving cocaine from Mexico through the U.S. to Canada, through, you know, through trucking. to trucking networks and the like. And we know that based on court documents, that wedding in the space of six months was connected to about 1,800 kilograms of cocaine. So, I mean, that's a substantial amount,

and it was a steady stream of cocaine. But to compare him to, you know, Escobar, Pabla, or Al-CAPO, experts say it's a little bit much. Just look at the way this ended. You know, wedding was all alone, turning himself in. But the way that El Chapo was taken down, it was a result in 2016 of a major police, military police operation involved the shootout. Same thing with Escobar. An operation, 1993, a chase, a shootout, he ends up getting killed.

There's no hidden tunnels here or kind of, you know, disguises or anything like that. He seems to have walked into U.S. custody. Yes, and weddings, it was the Sinolaa cartel that gave wedding that access to a supply of cocaine. You know, wedding from what we understand, wasn't making his own deals in Colombia to bring tons of cocaine up into Canada. He was relying on that network. And now that he's gone, what we've been told is that, well, it's just going to continue. Wedding was just a cog and a machine. Was there any sense ever that Mexico would impede his extradition back to?

the United States. He was transported back to the U.S. within hours of surrendering. That's a really good question. And the issue that's come out up here is not that Mexico was going to impede is that Mexico was too willing to let wedding go. Now, there's a senator here. Mexico's a bicameral republic. So there's a Senate and there's a Congress. And a senator for the opposition Institutional Revolution Party has actually raised questions about how easily it is for Mexico to send people to the U.S. Now, this same last week, Mexico actually transferred 37 people to the U.S. connected to the drug trade that the U.S. wanted.

And in the space of the last year, they've transferred over 90 people. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of options if you're one of those individuals for you to, like in Canada, you can challenge your ex and, you know, you have an ability to get a lawyer and challenge the extradition process. And there's appeals. Here it doesn't seem like that. But this senator, Claudia and I actually started to ask, you know, did the Mexican government inform the Canadian government

that they were about to send a Canadian citizen to the U.S., let them go just like that? And I've actually put these questions to global affairs and the RCP to find out what they knew and how much they knew about this whole thing, especially after he was captured and was sent to the U.S. I don't know if the government of Canada was informed. And I have put that question. I'm just waiting for answers on that. Just finally, he is scheduled to make his first court appearance today in California.

He knows a lot. Is there the possibility that he could spill some of what he knows to try to perhaps ease what is coming his way? There is a high possibility of that. And also the fact that he surrendered is probably going to have an impact on whatever sentence he will eventually get. It seems that he's probably going to strike a plea. deal, this thing won't go to trial. How much he turns over, how much he gives up, I don't, I don't know if we'll ever get a clear idea of that. But what, to give us an indication of that will be what type of sentence he receives. And, you know, that's still, you know, a few months down the line. Jorge, I appreciate this. Thank you very much. Thank you. Jorge Barrera is a CBC reporter based in Mexico City. A side note, Canada and Mexico have a very

close relationship. We have a lot of trade that goes back and forth between our two nations. We have a lot of tourism. Canada sends a lot of folks down to Mexico. There are Mexican tourists who come up to Canada. There's also the relationship in terms of trying to figure out how to deal with the Trump administration, all things that are the subject of great discussions. And the current will be headed to Mexico City in a few weeks' time to talk about some of those issues and more. Stay tuned for that. This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show. Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cBC.ca. slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway.

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