The Decibel - Alleged drug trafficking, murders and an Olympian-turned-fugitive

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Last week, the FBI and the RCMP announced 10 new arrests in connection with a $1-billion drug-trafficking ring allegedly run by Canadian former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding. The charges, which haven’t been tested in court, include drug trafficking, conspiracy to retaliate against a witness and murder. Wedding, who’s been in hiding since 2015, is now one of the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives.Eric Andrew-Gee is The Globe’s Quebec correspondent. He’s on the show to talk about what these new charges bring to light, and whether authorities are any closer to capturing Wedding.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.

Ryan Wedding is a modern-day iteration of Pavel Escobar. He's a modern-day iteration of El Chapo Guzman. This Justice Department and this FBI will work with our Canadian counterparts and the government officials across the world to bring him to justice. Last week, FBI director Cash Patel and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced 10 new arrests in connection with a $1 billion drug trafficking ring. It's allegedly run by a Canadian former Olympic snowboarder, Ryan Wedding. His organization is responsible for importing approximately 60 metric tons of cocaine a year into Los Angeles via semi-trucks from Mexico.

To put that in perspective, 60 metric tons is approximately 40, the weight of 40 standard cars. cars. Imagine that. The arrests include a lawyer whose former Instagram handle was Cocaine underscore lawyer, an alleged Montreal hitman who went by the aliases Tupac and Kim Jong-un, and a jeweler who goes by Diamond Tsar. The charges, which haven't been tested in court, include drug trafficking, conspiracy to retaliate against a witness, and murder. But Ryan Wedding, who's been in hiding since 2015, still remains at large.

He's now one of the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives. The Globe's Quebec correspondent, Eric Andrew G., has been reporting on how Wedding went from Olympic snowboarder to alleged international drug kingpin. Today, he's here to talk about what these new charges bring to light and whether authorities are any closer to capturing Ryan Wedding. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Eric. Thanks so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me.

So, Eric, let's just start at the beginning, before Ryan Wedding got into an alleged life of crime. What was his early life like? So he was raised in Thunder Bay, just outside Thunder Bay. His grandparents owned a sort of modest ski resort. his father and uncle were both competitive skiers. So skiing was kind of the family thing. And Ryan, from a pretty young age gets into competitive snowboarding. At age 15, he joins Team Canada. He's traveling around the world for competitions. Snowboarding's on the ascendant as an amateur sport. It enters the Olympics in the late 90s. And by 2002 for the Salt Lake City Olympics, he's an Olympian. He's going to compete for Team Canada.

Yeah, mad, keen, super competitive. His life is snowboarding. Okay, so he goes to the Olympics in 2002, but he actually has kind of a poor showing, right? I think he ends up 24th. Yeah. Yeah, and so Olympics 2002, what happens after that? Does he keep going on snowboarding, or is that kind of the end of his career?

Yeah, it's kind of, his career kind of peters out after that. He moves to Vancouver, enrols at some for his university, he starts working as a bouncer at a nightclub. According to some of the reporting that's been out there about him, he crosses paths with these sort of glamorous-seeming gangsters who frequent the nightclubs, or he's a bouncer. And organized crime is very active in Vancouver at this time. There's a huge booming pot industry, B.C. Bud is this kind of brand name that's known around the world. And that's also because at that time, you know, recreational weed was still illegal.

Yeah, I know. It seems like a long time ago now, but yes, you know, it was a massive industry. I mean, you know, it was sort of to the Fraser Valley and BC, what, you know, oil was to the oil patch. It was kind of multi-billion dollar industry. And Ryan Wedding is allegedly lured into this. He, in 2006, the RCMP descends on a place called 18-carat farms in Maple Ridge, BC, which is linked to, him and another competitive Canadian snowboarder. No charges were laid in this police raid,

but they found millions of dollars worth of pot plants and dried weed. Yeah, just to get some numbers here, it was rated for 6,800 pot plants, 40 kilos dried weed, estimated street value of $10 million. Yeah, so he's not there during the police raid. No charges are ultimately laid. But in 2008, they do charge, the law enforcement do charge him. What happens in 2008?

Yeah, so 2008, Ryan Wedding is, caught in an FBI sting in Southern California attempting to buy 24 kilos of cocaine. And he and an alleged accomplice are planning to import this to Canada, allegedly working for a major drug syndicate in the Vancouver area. He's arrested and spends almost two years awaiting trial in jail in San Diego and is ultimately convicted and sentenced to four years in prison, extraordinarily lenient sentence. So

mandatory minimum sentence at the time for what he was charged with conspiracy to traffic cocaine is 10 years and he gets four. And he doesn't spend the whole time though. He actually only spends two years in jail, right? Yeah, well he spent two years in jail waiting trial so he gets credit for time served. He spends about another

two years in a prison in Texas and then is deported to Canada in 2011 having served yeah, four years in federal jail in the U.S. which as former FBI agents involved in his case sort of ruefully acknowledged later on is a great training ground for high-level drug trafficking. Yeah, yeah. Tell me about his time when he was behind bars. What was that like?

Well, we know mostly about it from inference and from the account of the FBI agent who arrested him in 2008, who spoke to Rolling Stone magazine, Toronto Life magazine, a couple places that wrote in-depth profiles of Ryan Wedding in the past years. We can't be a fly on the wall, but, you know, as this FBI agent said, he left jail a better drug dealer than we found him. So what we know is, you know, the proof is sort of in the pudding. He is deported to Canada in December 2011 and washes up in Montreal, which has been for a long time a global hub of the cocaine trade.

It's a big international port and close to New York City. So he becomes a vastly more ambitious cocaine trafficker in his time of Montreal, allegedly, according to court documents that emerge from this 2015 RCMP investigation called Operation Harrington. Yeah, and this is the second sting. That's right. He's again caught up in a sting and this time has better luck emerging from it unscathed. But yes, Operation Harrington is a two-year-long investigation that begins in 2013. not so long after Brian Wedding has returned to Canada. You know, what he's alleged to have done in Montreal has become the point person for a scheme to import $750 million worth of cocaine from basically Colombia through the Caribbean

and into Canada through the Maritimes in collaboration with the Sinaloa cartel of Mexico, which is the outfit of El Chapo Guzman. So he's moved several rungs up the latter, to say the least. He's gone from kind of bit player trying to smuggle a couple dozen kilos of coke from San Diego into Vancouver into collaborating with the biggest player in the international drug trade, importing nearly a billion dollars with cocaine into Canada or attempting to. And the RCMP swoops in in 2015 and arrests at least a half dozen of his alleged co-conspirators. By the time they raid his condo in Montreal, he is gone. and it is the last time that law enforcement in the U.S. or Canada would sniff Ryan wedding for a long time. Wow.

Yeah, okay, so that's 2015. He escapes. He's now a fugitive. Yeah. And then we don't really hear much about him. So what has he been doing over these 10 years? What do we know? He's been moving even further up the ladder.

He's in with the Sinaloa cartel, allegedly. And by all accounts, law enforcement believes he's being protected by the Sinaloa cartel probably living in Mexico, and gradually over the next decade, he becomes the primary importer of cocaine into Canada, so a billion dollars worth a year, according to the RCNP and the FBI. And he develops this large network of associates all across Canada, British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec. And as is the nature of cocaine trafficking, it's a very violent world. They are tied to at least a half dozen alleged murders. And ultimately, and this is why they have appeared on our collective radar again, accused of murdering a federal witness in the case against them as the FBI ramped up its investigation.

How was he able to run this drug operation while also in hiding and also running from the authorities? Yeah. I mean, I think this is a familiar script for top-level drug kingpins. we don't know a lot about his life between 2015 and 2024. He sort of goes to ground. We get glimpses of it from court documents that have emerged since a number of his alleged co-conspirators have been arrested, either as part of earlier investigations or into this later investigation of the alleged murder of the government informant.

But he has a girlfriend, apparently, in Mexico City, for about a month in 2022. He has an associate within his network who allegedly procure his prostitutes for him and his associates. We just get little glimpses of personal life such as it is through these court documents. He's laundering enormous sums of money,

hundreds of millions of dollars, allegedly through cryptocurrency mostly, using encrypted chat apps to coordinate, allegedly hits assassinations around the world, but his life has remained pretty mysterious for the last decade since he became a fugitive. We'll be right back. Okay, so you mentioned he got back on the FBI's radar

because of this alleged murder of an FBI witness. Tell us about that. Yeah. So the informant brought Ryan Wedding back to the FBI's radar in the first place. In early 2024, a Colombian-Canadian-Duel citizen board of Montreal named Jonathan Acevedo Garcia. He decides to turn government informant and is pretty high up in the wedding organization hierarchy, allegedly, and so provides them with enough information to launch what they call Operation Giant Slalom in early

2024. It leads to several arrests, including weddings alleged second in command, Andrew Clark, a 34-year-old former Toronto elevator mechanic. So again, a somewhat improbable figure to have ended up this high up on the Sinaloa cartel sort of hierarchy. But it becomes clear after these arrests in October 24 to the wedding organization, according to court documents, that they have a quote unquote rat in their midst. From that point on fall of 2024, they begin an all-out manhunt for this person who they fairly quickly identify and who allegedly acknowledges in a text message to an alleged Montreal hitman in the organization that he is indeed the informant. So from... Sorry, I was wondering. I wanted to clear something. So he allegedly told

an alleged hitman that he was the FBI informant? It's one of the most difficult to digest. Nuggets of information in the court documents that have emerged from these recent arrests. One suspects that the question was not posed in the friendliest manner. It's entirely unclear why this person would admit that he was a government informant to a colleague in the crime organization. It's... I feel like I put a target on your back right there. Possibly they presented him with evidence that they already knew. And he was...

But in any case, it took them a number of months to track Jonathan Asabato Garcia. down in Medellin Colombia on January 31st, 2025, a Colombian hit squad went to the restaurant where Acevedo Garcia was having lunch. A man walked up to him allegedly with a silence pistol and shot him five times in the back of the head and fled on a motorcycle. From that point on, the heat on the wedding organization increases exponentially. Shortly thereafter, Wedding himself is placed on the FBI's 10 most wanted list. The reward for information leading to his arrest increases from $50,000 to $10 million. So from this point on, it becomes a much higher priority for the U.S. government.

This is someone, you know, they make promises to these people to protect their lives. This person was integral to the scheduled trial against Andrew Clark and others who had been arrested, thanks to his information. The investigation and the trial are now in the wind. It's a huge blow to the FBI. So they're mad. And at some point, they flip another member of the wedding organization. There is now, as part of their investigation,

into this alleged murder of their previous informant, another informant who's helping them track down the people responsible. So over the last seven or eight months, months culminating last week, they have been tracking down the fairly wide-ranging alleged conspiracy of individuals who collaborated on the murder of Jonathan Acevedo Garcia and who were all naturally also involved in other ways in the Wedding organization's drug smuggling. And so, Eric, the reason why we're talking about this at all right now is because the FBI and the RCMP arrested a bunch of people last week who are accused of being connected to Ryan Wedding.

alleged criminal network. So we're going to talk about three of these people and why they're arrested. Let's start with the lawyer. What do we know about Deepak Paradkar? Yeah, so criminal lawyers previously came to some notoriety when he represented Della Millard, the serial killer in southern Ontario. It's a high-profile case, extremely disturbing case. at the time, relatively unknown criminal defense lawyer.

He later develops the Instagram handle, cocaine underscore lawyer, cocaine lawyer. And according to law enforcement, as laid out in these court documents linked to his arrest, was a lynchpin of the wedding organization, would allegedly investigate drug runners who had been arrested with Ryan Wedding's cocaine to make sure they weren't cooperating with police

would allegedly allow wedding to listen in on privilege solicitor-client phone conversations with people who wedding was seeking to murder would introduce wedding and his associates allegedly to other connections in the drug trade. This is not just someone that you call when you are in trouble. The wedding organization was allegedly quite meticulous.

about laundering there, ill-gotten gains, and Paradkar was paid with expensive watches, apparently. But, yeah, he is arrested alongside six other Canadians last week, and another was arrested over the weekend. What was his alleged connection to the murder of Acevedo Garcia? So, according to U.S. law enforcement, he advised wedding that the case against Clark and other members, of their organization would fall apart if Acevedo Garcia were murdered. And stop short in the court documents of saying Pradkar urged him to murder Acevedo Garcia, but essentially he allegedly said, look, this is going to go away if this guy dies. Allegedly, this is the point at which wedding decides we need to take this guy out.

So pretty crucial role in the alleged murder plot. Another one of the men who was arrested was Atnaona in Montreal. Who is he? Adnaona is well known to Montreal-era police as a hitman, allegedly. He commits murder for hire, according to law enforcement, and had worked for the wedding organization for a number of years. In 2024, he is the person who reaches out to Acevedo Garcia, the alleged informant

and gets him to confess as alleged by the FBI in arrest warrants. So from that point on, he's heavily involved in tracking down Asperto Garcia. He tries to find his girlfriend. Beyond that, he remains in Montreal is not, from what we know, part of the hit squad that goes to Columbia,

but he has paid handsomely for his work. Wedding seems to have believed he was integral in carrying out. this alleged murder, he's paid $150,000 Canadian for his trouble and more importantly, 30 kilos of coke, which has a street value of well over a million dollars. So it is not, according to law enforcement, the first hit that Adnaona has carried out for wedding, but certainly the most consequential. Small detail here, but his aliases were Tupac and Kim Jong-un. That's right. How could I forget. There's some colorful aliases in the, in the wedding world. Yeah, there's cocaine lawyer,

there's Tupac, there's Kim Jong-un and someone who's known as the Diamond Tsar. Yes, so there's a jeweler involved here. So tell me about this jeweler or the Diamondsar. That's right. Roland Sokolowski does business as the Diamonds are in downtown Toronto. He's a jeweler. That's his above-board trade. Allegedly, he's also a money. launderer for the wedding organization. He helps wedding procure luxury vehicles, motorcycles, and cars as a way of stashing profits from drug trade. He has cryptocurrency wallets through which hundreds of millions of dollars of drug trafficking profits pass as alleged by the FBI. So a key figure in all of this and arrested alongside Adnona and Deepak Prad car last week. Right.

Okay. So eight Canadians have been arrested, including these three people we just talked about. What happens now? So the reward for information leading to Ryan Wedding's arrest has been increased to $15 million U.S. dollars. He is obviously the ultimate target of Operation Giant Slalom, which is ongoing. The U.S. is seeking to extradite these Canadians. That's the most proximate step. They have 90 days to file the paperwork, et cetera. Why is that? Why are they seeking to extradite them to the U.S.? Yeah, so although Ryan Wedding's main line of business is allegedly importing cocaine to Canada, there is an important American component to his operation. He allegedly has major drug depots in Southern California.

They're sort of entrepos where the cocaine is stored allegedly on its way from Mexico to Canada using these long-haul trucking companies in Ontario. So according to the FI, some of his wares are sold in the U.S. So the FBI is interested to that extent as well. He's importing cocaine into the U.S. And for that reason, he's on the FBI's radar in a big way. Just before I let you go,

what do we know about the likelihood that authorities will be able to apprehend, I guess the person they really want to apprehend here, which is Ryan Wedding? There's one ominous sign for him, which is that there is another informant in his midst after Acevedo Garcia's murder, the FBI succeeded in flipping another member of the wedding organization who, according to the often quite intimate and on the ground sort of details contained in the arrest warrants unveiled last week, seems to be quite well placed within the organization. They have access to, you know, conversations between Ryan Wedding, Deepak, Brodkar, and others discussing. the alleged plot to murder a government witness.

So this is someone who is kind of a fly on the wall, whether that person has information that can track down Ryan Wedding in his stronghold somewhere in Mexico, we believe, protected by the world's most powerful drug trafficking organization, an organization that has profoundly corrupted the administration of justice in Mexico, that is a sort of government

and to itself in large parts of the country that's been responsible for tens of thousands of deaths essentially a private army remains to be seen the Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a press conference last week

that they will bring him to justice there's nowhere for him to hide things of this nature I don't think anyone involved in the investigation takes this task lightly it's obviously they have brought down his second in command allegedly arrested his lawyer, his effective banker.

They've brought down the temples of the organization all around wedding and still wedding remains at large as he has for a decade now as he's erected this billion dollar a year cocaine trafficking operation. So he has been very successful at remaining on the lamb this long. You know, there is, in a way, this race against time now. The last time Ryan Wedding became aware that there was an informant in his midst took him about three months to track down and allegedly murder him. He now knows that there is another informant in his midst.

The person has obviously not been named. He's referred to as CW confidential witness in the charging documents related to this case. But the government is very clear about the fact that they do have. an informant. It was the same disclosure after the arrest in October 24 that confirmed a wedding that he had an informant in his midst then, you know, again, it was a mere matter of months before he tracked that person down and allegedly had him killed. So there is in a way a race on now for the government to apprehend Ryan Wedding before Wedding can apprehend the confidential witness against Tim. Eric, thank you so much for joining us today.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me. That was Eric Andrew G. The Globe's Quebec correspondent. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Mikhail Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Thank you.