The Decibel - Alleged drug kingpin Ryan Wedding arrested

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

Ryan Wedding, former Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug lord, is pleading not guilty to U.S. federal charges of leading an international drug trafficking ring and orchestrating the murders of multiple people. Wedding had been on the run for more than a decade and was on the FBI’s Top Ten Most Wanted list. But the sprawling criminal investigation crosses borders and legal experts are now questioning what lawful norms and treaties may be overridden in the race to prosecute Wedding and his associates in the U.S.Colin Freeze, crime and justice reporter for The Globe, talks about the manhunt for Wedding, the laws around extradition and why this case could turn into a test of Canada and Mexico’s legal sovereignty.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today, we are announcing a capture of another FBI's most wanted top-10 fugitive, Ryan Wedding. That makes six top-10 FBI captures in one year alone. Last Friday, FBI director Cash Patel held a news conference alongside law enforcement from Canada and the U.S. to announce the arrest of Ryan Wedding. The Canadian former Olympic snowboarder is accused of running a transnational drug trafficking ring. He'd been on the run for over a decade. I did not see this endgame coming. Colin Fries covers crime and justice issues for the globe.

He was arrested with some degree of fanfare but no fighting in Mexico a few days ago, and he was immediately speared away to the United States. On Monday, Wedding made his first court appearance and pleaded not guilty to federal charges he faces in the U.S., including charges of murder and drug trafficking. His next court appearance is currently scheduled for March 24th. Today, Colin is on the show. He'll tell us what we know about how wedding went from being allegedly protected by a Mexican cartel to a California courthouse,

and how his extradition raises questions about Mexican and Canadian sovereignty. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Hi, Colin, thanks so much for coming on the show. Good to be here. Just to say, we're talking midday Monday, and Ryan Wedding is expected to appear in court later this evening. So Ryan Wedding, the alleged drug kingpin and FBI fugitive, was arrested recently in Mexico City. What do we know about the arrest? Very little.

There had been a tempo of publicity and notoriety and very public manhunt for Ryan Wedding. And you got a sense over these past few weeks that the circle was closing on him. I don't want to sound like I know the ins and else of this. I think this is still a developing story, but without any apparent loss of life, without any bullets being fired, a man accused of being a drug kingpin was sort of taken off the table. And so it's a very neat end to a very long saga. Colin, have we learned anything more about his alleged position in the Sinaloa cartel since his arrest?

Well, I would describe him as a Sinaloa adjacent as opposed to a member of the Sinaloa cartel. For one, he's not Mexican, but I think he was a good earner. I think he was a good sort of adjunct. You know, I think our own law enforcement has described as a man who had a billion-dollar-year cocaine enterprise, which sounds like a lot, but it's dwarfed by the amount of money made by the Mexican cartels themselves. So he's kind of like a branch plant sort of logistics guy, I think, in the most maybe benign interpretation, who is orchestrating the movements of, you know, Colombian cocaine purchased by the Sinaloa through Mexico, up to Los Angeles, and across North, America to Canada. That, I think, was his role. That was his niche. There was a lot of stops along the way, and there was a lot of, frankly, murders along the way, according to authorities.

So it was, you know, a deadly trade he was engaged in for many years. And we should also mention these are allegations, of course, as we can't say for sure, but yeah, he's allegedly part of this drug cartel. So what charges does he face now? And in which jurisdictions? Ryan Wedding is a subject of a U.S. Department of Justice case that has filed in Los Angeles, California. This case has been put together by the U.S. FBI, but also to one degree or another with considerable help by the Mounties, who would, in ordinary circumstances, lay charges in Canada, but the way this has worked out or been allowed to work out, it is an FBI-centered case being prosecuted in Los Angeles. The gravest charges, Mr. Wedding faces, are murder

conspiracies, multiple murder or murder attempts in Ontario, also a murder plot against a member of his organization allegedly who is turning government witness and who was essentially assassinated in Colombia. So Ryan Wedding is a man accused of multiple murder for higher conspiracies. Okay. Let's take a moment to talk about Ryan Wedding's alleged associates who have also been apprehended but here in Canada. Can you tell me who are the major players when we talk about these associates? The way I see it, this is not a foreign conspiracy. This is largely a Canadian conspiracy that's being alleged here. Even though Ryan Wedding, and some people close to them were allegedly, you know, captured in Mexico, there's about a dozen

people before Canada's courts accused of being their associates and enablers. It's this sort of fascinating castes of characters. You've got your alleged corrupt Toronto lawyer. You've got your alleged Toronto cryptocurrency broker. You've got your alleged Vancouver cryptocurrency broker. And again, these cryptocurrency guys are accused of moving hundreds of millions of dollars and drug gang profits. You've got a Montreal hitman who's in the... You've got, you know, a violent young man from Toronto who's accused of doing a shooting in Niagara Falls, fatal shooting. And on top of all that, you've got Ryan Wedding's alleged number two second in command who was arrested in Mexico last year and it has now been before the U.S. criminal justice system for already for a year. And his name is Andrew Clark and equally fascinating guy.

What is the latest on these alleged associates? Like, do we know anything about what's going on with their cases? all I know is that while it's possible for Ryan wedding to be apprehended in Mexico and on the next flight to Los Angeles within 24 hours, the Canadian justice system does not work like that. I think about four people were picked up over a year ago, an additional eight people were picked up in Canada just about two or three months ago. And they're all very much at the outset of their extradition proceedings. Now, you know, in theory, an extradition hearing in Canada is a not onerous hearing. It's not supposed to last forever, but they can go quite a long time. And I think we're a year or possibly years away from sending the dozen or so, any of the dozen or so accused, to Los Angeles to face trial with Ryan Wedding.

Okay. So for the time being, they're going to be in Canada. Right. We've just had bail hearings for a bunch of them. The initial bail hearings. So our courts are seized with the question, and they're going to take some months on it, as to whether they can be livid under house arrest until they have their extradition hearings. But, you know, there's a lot of things to talk about, evidence, how it was obtained,

whether it was obtained lawfully, et cetera. That's going to consume the courts for, as I said, many months, possibly years. The RCMP has described Ryan Wedding's alleged operations as a billion dollar per year business. What happens to that business now? Well, I'd say Mexican cartels a bore a vacuum. I mean, it is, I don't think the business stops. You know, the drug business is a demand predicated business, and as long as people want to buy the product, people, you know, people find ways to satisfy that demand. So will cocaine still get from Columbia to Mexico to the streets or Toronto?

I assume it will. Will they have different intermediaries and conduits and routes? I think so. You know, Ryan Wedding was not Canada's only cocaine dealer. He was, you know, as he's accused of being, he's a man with some notoriety in that realm, but he was far from the only one. So I think the drugs will find a way. I think what this case has shown broadly speaking is that Canada is home to this alleged underworld of enablers and associates who, even if they're not directly involved in the cocaine trafficking themselves, they are sort of a sort of a secondary order of professionals who reap riches off of its trade. Right.

So if, you know, and without prejudicing the hearings of anybody who hasn't had a hearing yet, the trade itself demands participation from money launderers and heavies like hitmen and people who may be useful around the edges of that enterprise to keep people out of trouble or get people into the depths of trouble from which they'll never emerge. I mean, it's a it's a brutal business insanely profitable, insanely high risk, high rewards, sort of business for anybody who's engaged in that. I think the biggest example of that is Ryan Wedding himself. We'll be right back.

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Nominate at Best Executive at TGAM.ca.ca. The nomination deadline is January 31st. So, Colin, can you remind us of the law enforcement agencies that have been involved in capturing Ryan Wedding? Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, it's because it's, remember, all laws are structured, nationally. They generally, you know, Canada has a criminal code, U.S. has a code. The laws traditionally are enforceable within borders. There's ways around that, of course. Extradition being one of them,

which is the standard centuries-old compact where country A and country B say, okay, you don't send your guys into my country to get your bad guys, and I won't send my guys into your country to get my bad guys. You know, we'll work through each other's police, we'll work through each other's lawyers, and we'll have this process known as extradition to get a guy out of jurisdiction A and put them on trial jurisdiction B. But, you know, I think in the Ryan Wedding example, it's one of the closest cooperations between the RC&P and the FBI we've seen in recent memory. And it goes back years.

It's not particular to the current U.S. administration. But I think, you know, a couple of years ago, essentially there was some FBI people in Los Angeles who came to see Ryan Wedding, not just as a cocaine trafficker, but as as one. of the big cogs in this continental machine and maybe also alleging he was an exceptionally violent one. So they turned to Canadian liaison officers posted in Los Angeles to help them. And so the Mounties developed a close partnership with the FBI. But then as the investigation grew, it went to other places like Columbia, where there was a particularly brutal murder conspiracy hatched last year.

Facets of it went to Italy in England where luxury car dealers allegedly helped Mr. Wedding buy his luxury goods because you know he was wedding was reputational he's such he's a large and light figure who is according to U.S. Justice officials and treasury officials buying a car that was worth $13 million

buying a fleet of motorcycle bikes you know dealing in bulk cash and maybe moving hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency so you know apart from the arrest of Mr. Wedding himself there is a global run on his assets to see where they are and see if they could be intercepted

because these are no small amount of assets that are being alleged here. So some legal experts have concerns about the way Ryan Wedding was apprehended. What are the concerns? Well, I think the best way you can sort of imagine these concerns is that when we had all of Ryan Wedding's associates arrested in Canada over the past a year or so, I'm going to say a dozen, what happened? Well, U.S. prosecutors talked to our prosecutors. They filed some papers in court saying, hey, this is the case we want to prosecute them

in Los Angeles. Now, Canadian police go out here, do your thing. Here's a judicially authorized provisional extradition warrant. Go arrest them. Go give them extradition hearings and we'll see them in Los Angeles maybe a year or two's time. If it all works out, it might take quite a bit longer. But that's not what happened in Mexico. Mexican officials have basically said he walked up to the U.S. Embassy and said, okay, guys, I'm ready to get on that plane. We do know the head of the FBI was effusively praising the FBI hostage rescue team, which is a little bit of a misnomer. The HART is a sort of a, has a dual role, as I understand it, as a counterterrorism force and may have played a role in the spiriting Maduro out of Venezuela a few weeks ago.

This operation was not a snatch and grab by the looks of this. This looks like the FBI somehow exerted pressure on wedding directly or was allowed to exert pressure on wetting through his intermediaries. And I don't know how that cake was baked exactly at this point. But you sort of have the FBI. forcing an outcome here in Mexico that resulted in Ryan Wedding being on the ground in California within 24 hours of cuffs being placed on it, which is a pretty unconventional outcome. And, you know, it's all high-fives all around for law enforcement. But I do think there is maybe a second or third order concern here, and you're hearing it

in Mexico, and this wasn't a one-off. Ryan Wedding's number two is two I see, Andrew Clark, was kind of similarly spirited out of Mexico in the first days the Trump and administration, again, no extradition hearings, no process, no law courts at all. So it is this sort of wholeness, bolus handover of crime gang leaders from one justice system to the other, which is unconventional and noteworthy, I would say. I have a question about the fact that the FBI has really taken the lead on this case. You know, like we've mentioned, the RCMP and Mexican authorities are all involved. Why have the RCMP and Mexican authorities kind of let the, or at least, I mean, appears to let the FBI take the lead. If you look at the broad history of Ryan Wedding and my colleagues,

Tutankham Ha, Mike Hager, Eric Andrew Ging, of all written sort of retrospectives of his life, you know, Canadian police would have a go and he would elude them largely. And US police did get him about 15 years ago. And I think he served a four-year term when he's a much smaller cocaine dealer. And then he sort of disappears for most of the last decade. And then he becomes a really big thing. So I think it's in that context, the, again, all I know is what I've read in court documents, but I think the FBI reaches out to the RC&P and says, hey, this wedding guy, still out there getting big, we need your help.

And so it's quite complex because there is a parallel investigation into Ryan Wedding in Canada, but is, you know, Ryan Wedding, remember, is not just allegedly shipping cocaine. He's alleging murdering people in Canada. And I think there's, you know, several bodies to attest the fact that somebody got murdered. You know, that they sort of, you sort of see this weird spectacle where you have a Canadian hitman, for lack of a better word, who's being hired by somebody who's alleged to be wedding or one of his people, you know, doing crimes in Canada. You know, some of these charges in Los Angeles are that, you know, wedding and or his number two, Andrew Clark hired guys in Ontario Canada to do a shooting. And people got killed dead because of it. So the murder conspiracies were not charged in Canada in this instance.

The murder charges, conspiracy charges were charged in Los Angeles. So how does that work? Can you explain that to me? That's interesting. Right. So I think I ran the spy mounty at one point. He's like, look, we're not forum shopping here is what he said. You know, we're no, there's there's transnational collaborations.

And I think the way this was expressed to me is that the jurisdiction with the best evidence will, will prosecute the case, right? And there's no question. The U.S. has developed some. phenomenal evidence to show in court one day. They have seized phones. They have very significant conversations that people wrote with their thumbs about making sure somebody ended up dead.

The U.S. has developed more than once cooperating witnesses in their efforts to take down wedding. But those cooperating witnesses were developed with at least one instance with Canada's help. That's the guy who ended up dead in Columbia last year. He was essentially loaned by the FBI to the RCMP to do a little surveillance operation. that's also in court documents. So you see this incredible sharing of information and assets and forms of evidence between the RC&P and FBI where basically the border is not an impediment to those sorts

of things, shared operations, shared investigations, shared tangents, shared arrest strategies. It's quite something to see the two criminal justice system systems work in this complementary way. but there's also areas where the systems are not going to be so compatible, right? There's places the Americans may want to take things that Canada cannot necessarily go. Yeah, so what does that mean for prosecuting crimes that were committed in Canada? I think I'm understanding that it's just that the U.S. is taking and leaving the prosecution. Is that is that correct? So even if there's something that was allegedly committed in Canada, that that will be prosecuted in the U.S.

Right. Well, I should probably back up and explain that murder conspiracy is not a crime that is limited to by geography, right? So I think in both Canada, the United States, a murder conspiracy that occurs extraterritorially or out of jurisdiction, still prosecutable if the crime sort of crosses the jurisdiction you're in.

And I think, so murder conspiracy is one of those heinous and rare crimes where it doesn't fundamentally matter where in the world it happens. You can put that in your local court. You know, the fact that there's, you know, people who have been shot dead in Ontario, no impediment in Los Angeles to putting wedding gang and Mr. Wedding himself on trial for for those conspiracies.

So there's a category of crimes that are held to be so, so heinous, so loathsome that the, you know, it's decided in both the Canadian U.S. criminal justice system, that we're not going to let the fact that all or some of this happened outside our borders be a major limitation, right? Okay. There was a lot of rhetoric around the interagency collaboration that led to this arrest and its impacts on sovereignty. Can you explain why? Like, why is there a concern around sovereignty?

Well, I think Canadians, you know, in Canada, our justice system is not, we haven't had to bend as far as the Mexican system has had to bend, I think, in the last number of years. you know, and I think maybe you would have to look at just how much of a presence the cartels got Mexico, how big they got, that, you know, they seem to be de facto control. I mean, Donald Trump has alleged that the, you know, the president of Mexico doesn't control Mexico. The cartels control Mexico. Now, that's a bit overblown, but I think there was a notion that the profits that come and the weaponry that comes from the cocaine trade had made the cartels so big. so intractable, so corrupting that the Mexican criminal justice system could not bring them to heal anymore, which is why. And, you know, you started to see where we are today, which is that the U.S. is increasingly pressuring Mexico to solve the cartel problem, or if they don't, the U.S.

is going to do it for them. And what Shahnbaum, the president of Mexico's been trying to do, is keep U.S. boots off the ground. She doesn't want, she denounced the majority of the snatch and grab operation. She does not want the U.S. Army in her country and most countries do not want another army in their country. But these are some of the pressures we're seeing under the current administration, but it also predates it. It's just that the cartels are essentially Fortune 500 companies in terms of their scale

and growth and how you fight that may be a different kind of paradigm altogether. I mean, the Trump administration has designated cartels to be terrorist organizations. it has designated fentanyl to be a weapon of mass destruction. Canada, which, you know, and I've raised this issue, you know, has also designated the cartel to be terrorist organizations, the seven cartels to be terrorist organizations. So there is this new sort of semi-militarized intelligence world law enforcement approach to taking on the cartels that is happening. And I think that raises a variety of sovereignty issues eventually.

But I think the, you know, from a security standpoint, the idea of being, as crime goes transnational, so must we. And we'll see where that goes. Yeah. So we've heard from Mexico on the sovereignty issue. Has Canada said anything about it? Canada has not said, well, Canada has had some issues with the Majuro operation that occurred earlier this month. But in terms of, you know, the FBI coming into our country, I don't know that to be an issue at this point. In terms of any envisioning of a end runs around exodusian processes, I don't know that to be an issue. this point. In fact, the RCMP Commissioner Mike Deham has been at Cash Patel and Pamboddy's side a couple of times, Pambandi being the Attorney General of the United States. So I think Canada's

got a seat at the table. And, you know, you can ask our Prime Minister about the value of having a seat at the table because I think it means that the RCMP's helped steering outcomes in a way that the U.S. would regard as favorable. And that may be seen as a useful thing to do at this time. And these are legitimate issues. I'm not suggesting the politics is playing. over much of role here. I think, I think, you know, the RC&P commissioners, when he was asked about whether he would like to see the wedding gang associates removed from Canada, he said, I would make that happen tomorrow if I could, but he can't because we have a criminal justice system here that we'll make sure that they're not frivolously handed over to the United States.

Colin, just lastly, this has been a really sensational story. What will you be watching for as this continues to unfold? Well, I think, you know, the first order of business will be what, you know, Ryan Wedding is about to appear in a U.S. court in Los Angeles. That'll be interesting. We're hours away from that right now. We're going to have to see what that means for the dozen or so people who are in his in his ambit in Canada still trying to, we'll see how.

to, you know, will they be extradited to the United States? Will they, what sentence will they face? What sort of arguments will they raise? How much will they use Canada's court system to pry into tricky questions about how the evidence was gathered? On top of that, you know, it's going to be interesting to see what will happen when Mr. Weddings number two, who was caught a year ago, Andrew Clark, Canadian Andrew Clark. is he going to have to, how is he going to answer the same charges he faces?

How is he going to respond to the evidence of murder conspiracies that were taken from his phone? Who will these two guys have to look at each other in court at some point? You know, this whole thing is just a real, it's one of the most, how do I, vivid crime stories to, and transatlese. national crime stories has ever situated itself in not just one, but many courtrooms across the continent. And it really shines a spotlight on this weird, I think underworld, this deadly underworld, this insanely profitable underworld, which is drug trafficking and just how far people will go allegedly to enrich themselves at the cost of, at the very least, you know, ruining other people's lives and sometimes ending other people's lives.

Colin, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. That was Colin Freeze, a staff reporter at the globe who covers crime and justice issues. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Tiff Lamb produced this episode. Our producers are Madeline White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. Our editor is David Crosby.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.