The Underworld Podcast - The Olympic Snowboarder Narco Kingpin

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

How did a Canadian former Olympian build a one billion dollar narco empire? A few months ago, the feds added a new name to their 10 most wanted list: Ryan Wedding, a former Olympic athlete and middle class Canadian kid who managed to build himself into a powerful narco kingpin. But how the hell did a middle class kid from small town Canada go from being one of the world's best snowboarders to ordering numerous hits across Canada, moving thousands of kilos from Mexico through the US, and having a 10 million dollar bounty on his head? This is a wild one! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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A middle-aged couple from India are visiting their children, who live together in a rented home in a Toronto suburb. It's been a few months, and the trip is winding down. The son's at work, and the daughter is downstairs in the house with their parents. Perfect. normal night. That is, until a gunman burst into the house. This is no random robbery, though. It's a hit, one designed to send a message. The shooter lights the house up, firing dozens of shots. The older couple are each hit by at least 20 bullets, killing them both. The daughter is shot 13 times, but somehow she's going to survive. My father was shot in front of me, she tells the CBC from her hospital bed. I heard my mother's last screams. After that, there was complete silence.

Only the noises of gunshots. A tenant who lives downstairs is able to see a man rushing out the door and jumping into a waiting Ford F-150. But that's all the police get for months. In fact, to this day, they still don't know who the shooter is. But after a few months, they do know the motivation, a missing shipment of Coke stolen in Southern California. Only thing is, it's a case of mistaken identity. The murdered couple of couple of months later to April 1st, 2024 in Niagara Falls, Canada, just across the border from the U.S. For weeks, a 23-year-old hitman who goes by Mr. Perfect has been texting on an encrypted app with a high-level narco in Mexico who goes by Merro Wero.

Mr. Perfect is fresh at a prison and looking to put in some work. In fact, he's only been out a month, but he's already been flown to Mexico for five days of military training that cost $100,000, all paid for by Merro Wero. While there, Mr. Perfect text Merro,

I am what you now call Elite, thanks to you, brother. Elite isn't all caps. And he better be, because Merro has a list of people he needs checked off, including, quote, a realtor and van for $200,000. Some Arabs worth a couple Hondo each.

A mexie who owned a restaurant and his wife. Someone nicknamed Hancho for 150. Someone named Donnie for $300,000. And a person in Dubai for $1 million. He texts Mr. Perfect that he stands to earn, quote, a nice 1.5 mill this year if we keep knocking him out the park quick. At one point, the hitman texts him, give me the easiest one first.

The response? Maybe the Niagara Falls Ginger, Loll. Adding he'll pay 100K and cover expenses, and that Mr. Perfect should drive over from Toronto and quote, blow his top off, which April 1st, he does. Dressed in black, he fires a single shot into the head of a 29-year-old man believed to be involved

in international drug trafficking, then escapes in a white Audi before ditching that car for a green Ford Explorer. Unfortunately for Mr. Perfect, he's also Mr. Sloppy, and CCTV picks the whole thing up. Two weeks later, local cops pull over the Ford Explorer on a routine traffic stop before being informed that it might be a murder suspect. They find a whole lot of cash, some ammo, and a white iPhone on him, which contains the messages he exchanged with the narco, which Mr. Perfect had not yet deleted,

which I mean, Gen Z, you know, you can't trust them to do any job right. And it turns out that killing in Niagara, it's connected to the killings in Toronto, the Indian couple. In fact, the same guy ordered them both. And a few others, too. His name isn't Meroero. It's Andrew the dictator Clark, a 34-year-old Canadian who only a few years earlier was an elevator mechanic. And he's the second in command of a billion-dollar drug cartel with a leader who has an even stranger background, in an Olympian snowboarder from the Vancouver area, known as Ryan Wedding.

And this story has everything. The Sinloa cartel, ex-KGB traffickers undercover, shady Hezbollah link financers, DJ Collett's mansion in Miami, a broad daylight witness murdered in Medean, and a whole bunch of Coke, Fent, Meth, and Murder. This is The Underworld podcast. Welcome back to the audio and now visual experience known as the Underworld podcast, where two journalists, myself Danny Gold, and my co-host, Sean Williams, bring you a new story of international organized crime every single week.

We trade off hosting duties. We share some laughs. We learn things about Sean's domestic life against our will. We have fun here. I mean, in fairness, I do think the listeners want to know what I can bench. But, I mean, I guess we can do that as a bonus. There have been a couple comments about you being a chat, like specifically that word. So tell us.

I mean, how much can you bench? Oh man It's gonna be in kilos You wouldn't know Yeah we've seen a lot of comments too With the fashion critiques A lot of mean things said about Sean's eyebrows But look

We're in the video game Thanks to our pals at Spotify Who graciously let us use their studio So you know We're here to stay for right now No they look good dude Don't worry about it As always bonus episodes

At patreon.com slash aneworld podcast You can sign up here on iTunes or Spotify Merch at Underworldpod com email us at the Underwall podcast at Gmail for whatever you want now are you sure like what what's going on

no no they look they look good dude I was just uh just jokes also you know the the trailer for what grand theft auto 6 just came out we need to if you can get our podcast as one of those radio stations we need to make that happen it's the perfect fit I've never

I mean peanut butter and jelly man come on um yeah for sure yeah now let's uh let's have some some fun gentlemen and i guess uh you know seven ladies that listen to us ryan wedding just uh a real renaissance man right he could snowboard really well and he also sells drugs really well writes l a mcgazin quote wedding ran a one billion dollar drug empire along with a motley coterie how do you say that word coterie coterie yeah coterie of criminal compatriots among among them nahim horhe bonilla a music

executive whose preferred nickname was the one and whom investigators believe was negotiating drug deals as the owner of the Miami Beach hotspot Mandrake, an Indian trucking magnate, a Toronto hitman, Russian mobsters, and Wedding's childhood buddy Andrew Clark, the Olympian Second in Command, known by his alias, The Dictator. I mean, this episode, there's a lot of reporting

on the story when it dropped, and I used the whole bunch of it, but both the CBC and the Toronto Star have done some fantastic stuff. There's a good piece in Rolling Stone where the guy actually started reporting on wedding in 2009 for a piece that never ran back then.

He had actually been popped at a much smaller federal drug trafficking charge back then, which is why this guy started reporting on it. That was in San Diego in 2008. There's also a few good pieces in LA magazine as he's getting charged in the California courts. So the guy had to stop reporting because there was court restrictions. I don't know. I don't know how it works in the States or in Canada. No, no, no, no. He didn't stop. I think he he started, that's true. You do have a multi-million. What how much, how many million dollars? A hundred, a hundred million. What's going on with that lawsuit?

Ryan Wedding, but I can't say. You can't say, does it have to do with, with, you know, maybe like a ditty party or something, or is it related to your reporting? It's related to my reporting, unfortunately. Okay. They haven't got me on the other stuff. No, what happened was the guy, I believe,

he reported it out in 2009 when this was happening, but from the looks of things probably couldn't sell the story or it wasn't working out. So he, I guess, you know, put it, shelved it, and then this thing happens where this guy becomes a huge international story, and he picked it back up, but that's kind of, you know. Good fan. Yeah, it is.

I like when that works out that way. Okay. Ryan Wedding, if you look at a picture of the guy, well, one of the ones that's circulated, he actually looks like the actor Dieterick Botter. I don't know if you guys know who he is, but he's the guy, specifically, I think he was on the Drew Carey show, but he's also the next door neighbor in office space, which is when he looks exact, you know, I'm talking like long hair, kind of receding hairline mustache. I mean, I'm serious, it's uncanny.

The guy, the two chicks are the same time guy, you know, office base? Yeah, sure. Jesus. But also, he's 240 pounds. He's 6'3 foot 3. He's an athlete, right? And he's someone who is physically imposing. He's born in 1981, and he grows up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, which is just northeast of

the eastern edge of Minnesota on Lake Superior. It's a working class town, sort of Canadian wilderness folk. You know the vibes. Yeah, I don't. But I guess it's like the same. same as Oklahoma Roughneck vibes, right? I mean, I think it's a little more less hostile, you know,

like, and more flannel. Okay. Good at, like, you know, camping a lot and snowmobiling. I don't know if you've watched Shorzie or Lauerkenny. If you haven't, you really should, but sort of like that, you know? Okay. Yeah, Bonnie Vair. That's what I'm thinking. He's a real outdoor kid, for sure, you know, but his dad's an engineer, and he gets good with computers,

and he's actually into it. His family is also big in competitive skiing. Here's LA Magazine's Michelle McPhile. quote, his father Renee was a sought-after engineer proficient in several languages. His mother, Karen, was a nurse. Wedding, along with his two sisters, grew up speaking French and English. The natural-born athlete had always leaned into adventure sports. Motorcross, dirt biking, rugby, but it was snowboarding in which wedding excelled.

His grandparents owned Thunder Bay's Mount Baldy Ski Resort, and it was here that wedding learned to shred, embarking on a career path as a competitive snowboarder. When he's 12, his family moves to Vancouver. where the famous Whistler Ski Mountain is, and Wedding gets super into snowboarding, winning a big race when he's 12. Coaches describe him as fearless, which, you know, foreshadowing.

So another thing Vancouver gets famous for in the 90s, right when wedding moves there, is gangs, but not just any sort of gangs. These gangs are kind of like middle-class kids, usually hybrid, multi-ethnic gangs, who made huge amounts of money in the drug game in no small part because of Vancouver's lax enforcement and just sort of like, you know,

it was a, major trafficking center and still is. We have an old episode, I think, on one of those gangsters from nearby. It's a town called Surrey, which I think is south of Vancouver. Bindy Joe Hall, which is a fantastic episode, but you've got young, impressionable Ryan Wedding, and he is coming of age, like right at this time when all these guys would be all over the place. At 15, he's good enough to make the national team, and he's traveling around the world, probably just, you know, having a great time, just being a young snowboard or a surfer, you know, getting paid to live the life. Like, what a dream. He is, he's legit, though. You know, he's, he's preparing for the Olympics,

but it's not the easiest life. Lots of training, hard work, all that stuff. In 1999, he wins bronze at the junior world championship, and then in 2001, a silver in the junior world championships. All right. I mean, that's pretty good, but did he have one of those jester hats? You know, that's the first thing I think of when I think of snowboarding, because I know almost nothing about it. I mean, that and cool boarders, which was amazing on the PS1. Also, shout out to rugby being considered an adventure sport. I like that. You know, I assume if he was snowboarding in the late 90s or late 90s

or the 2000s, he definitely did have one of those hats. He wore down the mountain on like special special days, you know? Just kind of, it was the vibe. In 2002, he makes the Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. He's in competition for the giant slalom, his family friends cheering him on, but he ends up

getting 24th place, which, I mean, 24th place, like, are you really you really considered an Olympian? If you get 24th place, Sean, you could probably get 24th place. I mean, yeah, 34. Yeah, I mean, I'm just kind of kidding. Being in the Olympics is an insane accomplishment unless it's curling, which, you know,

you could just kind of show up, I feel like in that, like just train for like a year and just kind of make it happen. But you know what I like? I like the one. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I can't have this. This is anti-curling propaganda. This is a 500-year-old spool.

You got like a massive lump of granite and you're basically playing crown bowls. This is, that's awesome. That's just awesome. I can't have this. Yeah, I like the one where they cross. cross-country ski and then shoot and then ski again. I don't know what that's called, but it's pretty sick. Anyway.

The Finnish Army? Yeah. The Olympics end with his dismal finish, and you couldn't just become a snowboard or influencer then or whatever. You know, he needs to get a real job. So he enrolls at a local college. He has some real career plans. And as a side gig, he takes a job as a bouncer at a club where there's some wild

violence. The Vancouver gang scene we've talked about in previous episodes. It's getting wild, you know, shootings, brawls, all that in the nightclubs. the young upstar gangs that had spiraled off from Beanie Joe Hall and his rivals like the United Nations, Red Scorpions, Bacon Brothers, it's really kicking off as they fight for control of the drug market, moving pounds of weed and then later coke. There's also heavy Asian organized crime, the Hell's Angels are involved, it's all that sort of stuff. And wedding is around all of this.

He sees the flash, he sees the money, he sees the game, and he sees that as kids who kind of grew up like he did, you know, that are sort of like him that are in on it. And in Canada then, well, I mean, Vancouver, there's just so much weed, a lot of Coke starting to move through. It's not hard to get involved and get involved. He does. He's already working in the nightlife scene. And I imagine as an Olympian snowboarder and a big dude in Canada, people dug that. So he starts getting the connects that he needs. He's making money. He's buying designer clothes, you know, motorcycles, beamers, the Dukadi, the new condos. He drops out of college. He's actually growing weed at this point, setting up big houses, growing. houses. We're talking mid-2000s here he's making bank. And according to the article in

Rolling Stone, he's being watched by the cops at this point and is rumored to run a grow-op with 8,000 plants in a big hidden warehouse. But in 2006, that op gets rated with an estimated $10 million of product confiscated. Wedding seems to have been pretty careful, though, enough so that the cops don't really have much on him and he avoids charges. 10 mil. That has escalated pretty, pretty quickly well so i mean this is the next episode i'm working on but apparently you know if you have the the gumption or the hubris it's not that hard to set up a grow house where you really make millions and millions of dollars um but i've got a really interesting one that we're cooking up thanks to a listener who tip me off on something that'll come in a couple weeks that sounds incredible yeah yeah

we should tee that up because you've been talking about that all week and i i really want to know more yeah yeah yeah you mean like teed up right now like mention it Should we do a trailer right now? No, I don't know. I think we're good. We'll keep a little bit of suspense going, you know? Anyway, wedding obviously has money issues now, which is what happens when you lose that much product. He does a couple of bad deals, too, so he really needs to hit a lick. And in 2007, he's hanging out with a shady Iranian dude set to have some Hezbollah connections,

Hassan Sharani, who had been in the game for a while and has reputed to be a money launder heavy. The two of them get involved with a reputed Russian mobster who owns a radio station in Vancouver, And the three of them are setting up a Coke deal in LA for 24 keys, which is not a small amount. I mean, if you're paying LeBron, that's $552,000. Now, the guy on the other side of the deal just happens to be a former KGB agent. Seriously, we're in 2008 now. The partners, they go to L.A., and according to testimony, wedding seems like he might be in way over his head. When they touch down in L.A.X., you know, with their dreams and their cardigans, the former KGB guy is there.

And he demands the money right away. But like, of course, they don't have it. They just flew in. They tell the KGB guy, look, we'll buy one kilo from you. If it checks out, we're going to grab the other 23. Did you just write the show so you get the IP for an option deal? Because this is getting pretty insane and we're what, like a third through or something? So the Rolling Stone guy, I believe, sold the IP and they're turning it into, I think, a doc series or a fiction series.

So we're, you know, he did all the hard work. This is always happening to better people, eh? More power to him. I mean, come on, you know. Now, another report says wedding wasn't stressing. Wright's Rolling Stone, quote, but wedding didn't appear nervous, the agent says. He acted like he was on vacation.

He and Shirani slept in, ate breakfast at Denny's, and smoked at hookah lounges late into the night. When they had downtime, wedding flipped through real estate magazines, mulling over the possibility of buying property in Southern California. There's just one little issue with the whole situation. The former KGB guy,

the one selling the keys to them, he's wired up. He's an informant for the feds. And when things are about to proceed to the big purchase, they raid the hotel room and Ryan Wedding and his partners go down hard. So the guy was, he was actually XKGB, but he was also an informant? Or was the whole thing just a ruse? He's ex-KGB and an informant. I don't know what his background is, but I'd really like to.

I couldn't find more on it. Maybe he got busted for being involved or something like that. You know, a lot of these intel guys go into getting to the game after, afterwards. So I don't know, but it's, I mean, it's kind of, you know, amazing, amazing little bit part. And you've got to wonder, too, if this is like the first big Coke deal these guys are doing are only the first big deal we know about. But either way, Sharani and the Russian, they take pleas, 18 and 13 months. Sharani actually flips and testifies, but wedding refuses. He won't cooperate. He ends up going to trial and getting convicted, and it's a mandatory minimum of 10 years. Though he figures he'll probably get transferred to Canada and get it reduced because, you know, there are no,

laws in Canada. And in May of 2010, he does get it reduced to four years, and he's already served two at that point. Business owners, quick question, when someone hears your phone number, does it stand out or just sound like a bunch of numbers, a bunch of, you know, just some jumble that no one's going to remember? Let's fix that with a ring boost. The go-to service for custom phone numbers that make your business stand out. Whether you're running a small business or scaling something big, the right number makes it ridiculously easy for customers to remember you, and actually call. You can get a local number to connect with a regional audience.

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head over to ringboost.com and use promo code Underworld for an exclusive discount. That's ringboost.com, promo code underworld, ring boost because voice matters. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in the crowd. But too often, life gets busy. Or the price holds you back. Price line is here to help you make it happen. With millions of deals on flights who, who do you. hotels and rental cars, you can go see the game live.

Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. Mom, can you tell me a story? Sure. Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car. Was she brave? She was tired, mostly.

But she went to Corvana.com and found a great car at a great price. No secret treasure map required. Did you have to find a dragon? Nope, she bought it 100% online. from her bed actually. Was it scary? Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof?

It did, actually. Okay, good story. Car buying you'll want to tell stories about. Buy your car today on... Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. In prison, wedding is hitting the gym hard, getting seriously big and imposing. He's not intimidated.

He also has a number of various girlfriends visiting him, one even flashing him in the visiting room that causes a stir. He eventually gets married to one while in prison in 2011, but we'll get to that later. But yeah, he's kind of like a badass in prison, you know. And the fact that he doesn't talk, I'm sure it goes around that it earns him some more respect. And the two prisons he ends up spending time in in America are in San Diego and Texas. And you can guess what the prisoner makeup is. All sorts of cartel and Mexican gang dudes locked up with him, lots of new friends and new connections in the drug game.

Shortly after he sent to that prison in Texas, though, he gets deported back to Canada. And because it got reduced and when time served, he's actually released in 2011. Does he straighten up and fly right, Sean, do you think? I bet you think he does. You sweet little summer child. You think he gets it together. He gets a real job and becomes a family man, right? And the episode just ends right here 20 minutes end. You just, you think that happens, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. Well, guess what, dummy? He doesn't. The guy loves doing crime. And he's kind of good at it despite that hiccup. I mean, he's dog shit at snowboarding, so you might as well do this. Yeah, I mean, you get 24th, you're not really,

burden isn't knocking down your door for a sponsorship, you know what I'm saying? Might as well just fall down the mountain. So this is what he starts to make the transition to like a big boy in Arco, you know. In 2013, he's back in Canada. He decides to head to the place where the aspiring big-time professional, international criminal is going to be able to make some power moves, which is in Montreal. And we've done the Rizzuto family, we've done the Hells Angels and the other bikers. So you guys know the Montreal drug game,

The organized crime game there is serious on a seriously international level. I mean, don't get me wrong, Vancouver, where he is originally, it's gnarly with street gangs and some bikers and Asian organized crime as well, but the Montreal Mafia and the Hells Angels are a whole different breed. But this is also around the time the Sinaloa cartel is starting to expand heavy in Canada and get involved on the ground. This actually reminds me of like another sort of really early episode we did. I think it's from the same era on another small town Canada boy, Jimmy Corniowe,

who was pushing a billion dollar. of weed in the New York area. I think at one point, the biggest weed dealer in the Northeast, by aligning with bikers, street gangs, the mob, even Native American smugglers across the border. It's funny that wedding also stands accused of having, you know, a billion-dollar drug ring, too. The feds just love those big round numbers. Yeah, big round, completely made up numbers. I remember that Jimmy guy. It was like the one name that even I had absolutely no idea how to pronounce, and you've just proved me wrong, like 10 times I think that's it. I think I had a French Canadian sign off on it. But no, I mean, look,

both those guys were pushing weight of like astronomical proportion. So I think a billion probably isn't too far at off. Do they round up from like 925? Who knows how these numbers are calculated anyway? Street value, host of value, whatever. The point is the guy is a major player. So when Wedding leaves prison originally, he's motivated, he has this plan, he has these contacts. And the risuto's themselves are actually weakened, and the Canadian biker gangs, too, they're on their back foot after the big biker war in the raids. So there's room to maneuver. And he must have got things going really, really quickly, because by 2013, the Canadian authorities are already looking into two men, one with Air Force connections and one with Coast Guard connections, and they're looking to move

a thousand keys, and that's when his name comes up. The investigation, it eventually points to wedding as the ringleader. He's being fingered as working with a guy who has some connections to choppo at that point. In fact, Wedding meets with an undercover agent and they're discussing plans to move away from the Caribbean into Canada through sailboats and small fishing boats into Newfoundland and then Montreal, which is not the most original plan, but sort of a classic of the genre. Weddings introduced to the undercover as the man in charge and openly talks about himself as a cocaine importer. I mean, you've got to hand to this guy. He's like, I don't know. He's a bit of a dummy at times, falling up. Actually, falling up, that would be a great name for a biography about Snowboard, a drug dealer. That is not bad.

Do you ever wonder sometimes, you ever think and say, you know, like, I'm smart in these guys. If I ever just put my mind to it, this thought ever crossed your mind? No, I never think that. Strangely, on paper, 2014, wedding is broke, right? We know this because he files for bankruptcy and states for the record that he is unemployed. But at the same time, he's driving a brand new Ford F-350 and living with his wife in a gated community. And oh yeah, he gets married in prison in 2011 to an Iranian woman that would later be investigated, though never charged,

with some funny money moves and a kidnapping. But as of now, she has not been charged. I think these are all recent charges in the past couple of years. Then in 2015, the French Navy intercepts a boat with 200 keys near Antigua in the French Caribbean, which I didn't think the French Navy patrolled over there, but I guess it makes sense that they do. Then the Canadian authorities move in and do some takedowns, arresting a bunch of people with help from the undercover who had infiltrated.

the ring. Wedding, though, evades arrest, which is a little weird, and this is how Rolling Stone writes it up, quote. Wedding was never arrested in connection with the case. And other than the brief moment he met with an undercover officer in Montreal, he doesn't appear in the reams of investigative files and court documents related to it. Liam Price, the Director General International Special Services for the RCMP, which is Canada's equivalent to the FBI, says Wedding has been a fugitive from justice since 2015, but wouldn't say if Canadian police have been actively perceived. assuming him since that time. And later on, a bunch of people involved in that 2015 case are mysteriously gunned down, but I guess, you know, it's not that mysterious in these circumstances.

So technically, wedding has been a fugitive and wanted since that bus in 2015, but I think even though we are talking now about $20 million shipments, he was definitely not seen as a big-time player like he is now. Now, later on in 2010s and into the 2020s is when wedding really gets cooking. The timing is tricky on some of this stuff, but at some point, he looks up. up, he hooks up with, uh, with Merroero, his friend, uh, Andrew Clark from the cold open. He's a close friend from growing up and another kind of, you know, flannel wearing

Canadian, also known as the dictator and El Nino Problematico, aka the problem child, which, you know, dude, come on, El Nino Problematico. Okay. It definitely sounds like a nickname that a white Canadian guy gives himself in Mexico. Like, I'm just, just kind of saying, you know, like, don't get me wrong.

Dude does a lot of Problematico, but still like, I can't see like, El Mio and his boys just being like, oh, yeah, this guy. This guy's the problem child right here, you know, throwing that nickname out there. Yeah, that is the guy with the jester beanie. He's like doing magic tricks for girls on Playa Del Carmen or something right now. That's just like what you were doing, right? Kind of close.

I was wearing more of a straw hat, you know, but no magic tricks. Previously, the problem child was an elevator mechanic, which is actually like a really good job, if you look into it, super high paying. And a small-time landlord. In fact, he must have been either really good at leading a double-level life or not involved in the drug game until fairly recently because in 2020, Toronto Life magazine interviews him for an article highlighting how landlords are dealing with the first few weeks of the pandemic.

Him and his wife apparently have six properties and seven tenants at the time and Clark cuts his tenants some discounts to help out. The CBC reports on an email he wrote to the magazine, quote, I want to show our tenants that I care about them, not just about them paying me. We are lucky I have a good job and we are very frugal. I mean, I don't know, man. I, going from nothing to like the right-hand man of a billion-dollar drug empire ordering hits in like three to four years, I'm going to go ahead and say that he was probably already involved. Yeah, I mean, also, I feel like half the stories I've looked into lately, like Chinese money laundering specific drug cartels.

They are washing like all of their money through Canadian property. Canadian, Canadian listeners tell us what's going on there. It's nuts. Oh, yeah, it's insane, dude. The way it moves through real estate there and like there's, like I said, there's no laws in Canada. Dude, they can just do what they want. There's that guy who he actually has a substack called the Bureau, I think, which is like he's the one who's done all these insane exposés on the like billions and billions of dollars of illicit money traveling through Canada. And it's all nuts. And a lot of it's connected to like the cartels, the Chinese Communist Party. It is wild, wild stuff.

We'll talk a little bit more about that in two weeks, actually. Uh-huh. Yeah. Weddings operation according to the feds is now moving major shipments, hundreds of keys. from Southern California into Canada. He's got two Indo-Canadian trucking magnets for the transpo. Here's a 2024 federal indictment. Wedding and Clark, quote,

conspired to ship bulk quantities of cocaine, weighing hundreds of kilograms from Southern California to Canada through a Canada-based drug transportation network run by Hard Deep Rat, 46 of Ontario, Canada, and Gerpreet Singh, 31 of Ontario, Canada. The cocaine shipments were transported from Mexico to the Los Angeles area, where the cocaine trafficking organizations' operatives stored the cocaine in stash houses, before delivering it to the transportation network couriers

for delivery to Canada using long-haul semi-trucks. But unfortunately for Wedding, his massive operation is already compromised. Big time compromised. Because one of his trust lieutenants who has worked with him for a decade or so flips sometime in 2023 and becomes an informant, a guy by the name of Jonathan Acevedo Garcia. Garcia has been arrested in both the U.S. and Canada. He also does time in the same Texas prison as wedding. And here, he starts wearing a wire. He records a meeting with wedding in January of 2024, where they discussed moving 350 kilo shipments of EA, using that Canadian trucking network we mentioned earlier, who are also an uncle-nephew team, which is kind of like the party rock guys. Remember them, dude? Those guys, they had a hell of a summer that year.

Wait, hold on. LFMO were an uncle and nephew. The guys with a big hair. First of all, it's amazing that you remember the name of the band. I commend you, dude. But, But yeah, no, they were an uncle-nephew team for sure. Wow. Okay. That makes them even lame? No, dude, they ruled. Great summer with those guys.

Thank you. Great summer with those guys. Weddings team, speaking of LMFAO, they're also apparently moving Fent and Meth. We should add a legal disclaimer. Yeah, I don't think, I don't think, I don't have any evidence that points to LMFAO being involved with fentanyl or meth, just for the record. A month later in February of that year, Clark, the right-hand man, he tells Garcia the informant to meet with the uncle and nephew and negotiate a flat fee for the shipments, which ends up being 220 key per shipment. And they ended up moving about 650 keys together. Also, remember the cold

open, the, you know, the couple that gets killed for mistaken identity. That had to do with a shipment that was stolen in Southern California by a trucker. I don't think that network was involved, though. There's more trouble for weddings organization in the middle of 2024 in June with a guy that he's wholesaling to. And that's Nahim Bonilla, who's a Montreal bar owner who runs into some trouble in 2019 when his house keeps getting set on fire

and there's a shooting outside of it, which means he was probably not just, you know, owning a bar and bartending. He moves to Miami, and like any guy who is totally doing things above board, he buys DJ Collett's mansion and hangs out with Jaru. He lists himself again, like any upstanding citizen,

as the CEO of a record label, and he also owns a Miami restaurant slash nightclub, which is, you know, a bigger indicator of a guy being a dirtbag than pretty much anything else is owning a restaurant nightclub in Miami. There is nothing bigger than that. I mean, why would I want my Yorkshire puts and spotted dick in full view of a pole dancer's pole? I don't know. It's disgusting. And I know you agree with me on that. I don't know, dude. If you've ever been to 11, it's kind of, they make it work. They really do.

Take me there. Take me there. I don't know if I have the willpower or the money to do that anymore. But Bonilla, he breaks rule number 10, which is that he starts selling on consignment, which as we've reminded you many times is strictly for live men and not for a freshman. Wedding Inco would give him 12 keys of which he would pay for seven right away. He'd be front at five. He messes up, though, sometime in the early summer. He doesn't have the money to pay wedding for those five keys.

So Wedding, like any good businessman, sends him a message on that encrypted chat they used. It was called Three Ma'am that he's going to have Bonilla's mom killed unless he pays up for those five keys as soon as possible. Is that one of those networks, the authorities cracked, like the incro chat stuff? I don't think so. Because the way that these guys got these messages was because the guy didn't delete them. But it might have been cracked. I don't know specifically. I'm not sure about Three Ma.

I do remember Incro chat and that huge thing and those guys were working on a book about it, I think, that we've had on, or big articles on it. But I don't know what the situation with Threma was. It is amazing how many of those there are, though, you know? Yeah, yeah. Didn't was was the was the was the inco one the one that the feds built themselves? Yes, I think so. There's like three three or four years ago now. Yeah.

And then they, uh, they fed about the super cartels in Europe and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, that's just good work, man. Uh, Bonilla right away sends him 20K in crypto because of course. And then promises to send 20 keys of meth to Canada as a repayment, which he does. And that's how we get this incredible headline. Montreal landlord accused of shipping meth to repay fugitive.

ex-Olympian, which is, you know, great stuff. But, you know, like anyone managing a bunch of dummies, weddings problems are never ending. So that happens in June. In July, Gerpete Singh, who's the nephew in the Indian trucking duo, he hedged the Sinaloa to resolve some sort of debt issue with the Sinalowans. And a few days after arriving in early August, he promptly gets kidnapped in Kulia Khan, which is, you know, guess it doesn't get resolved. And it kind of feels like that's, that's kind of how The Sinola ones usually deal with dead issues. So flying there to kind of figure it out, not the wisest thing in the world.

Singh's wife, she helps collect 400K to send us a ransom, and then wedding negotiates his release, and he's freed a few days later, which, you know, dude, like what a headache it is just being a top narco. You're working with these knuckleheads. It's one thing after another. And I'll do respect, Sean. You got no idea what it's like to be number one.

Every decision you make affects every facet of every other thing. It's too much to deal with almost. And in the end, you're completely alone with it all. Yeah, I mean, I get it, man. You're doing the advertising emails. Now, this guy, this guy Singh is also a mover and a shaker enough to be operating in the UAE and taking meetings with the big-time Irish mob family, the Kenahan, who are global, global cartel. Garcia, the informant, had also been meeting with Singh in UAE.

This guy's all over the map, dude, with the wire, which is crazy. According to the CBC, U.S. prosecutors say he had, quote, extensive organized crime connections within Dubai, including relationships with members of the Kinnahang gang, which is a well-known, violent organized crime group operating throughout the world. Singh 31 is also alleged to have been involved in a scheme to ship stolen high-end cars to Dubai through the port of Montreal. It's just kind of wild, huh? You know, like the interconnectedness of it all? Just like what a little crew that they put together. You know, they're like the Avengers, except they keep messing up. And also very diverse.

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With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1.5.000. per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer. 2024 as well is when those hits from the cold opening are happening and wedding and Clark are just paying him in to take people out. You've got that couple killed after they were mistaken for a truck driver who ripped off a shipment. You have the guy in Niagara Falls. Another guy in Brampton is killed over a drug debt that's in Ontario.

And as we mentioned earlier, there's like a half dozen more people on Wedding and Clark's hit list. But with the help of that informant wearing a wire, Garcia, and the phone from our friend, and Mr. Perfect in the cold open, things get tight around the wedding operation. There's massive raids on his network in October. The feds dub it Operation Giant Slalom after Wedding's Olympic racing sport. Probably, you know, all the good snow references were taken.

14 guys overall are targeting Colombia, the states, Canada, and Mexico. The truck guys go down. Bonilla gets bagged at his DJ Collin mansion in Miami. In Mexico, there's a daring daytime raid by the Mexican Marines, who are no joke, at a restaurant in Guadalajara, Halisco, where they managed to arrest weddings right-hand man, Clark.

Remember that story from February a few months ago about the dozens, I think 30 or so cartel guys being extraded from Mexico to the U.S. in like an unprecedented move? One of them is the cartel guy I was supposed to embed with a few years ago, El Durango, and one of them is this guy, Clark, which gives you an idea of how big they actually were. Wow. And another strange thing, he gets let out of bail in Mexico for a minute. Nobody knows why, though.

I mean, come on, we know why. But then he's recaptured with, there's no details forthcoming on that. but we kind of know what they are. Here's the FBI statement on those initial raids. Quote, Wedding went from treading powder on the slopes at the Olympics to distributing powder cocaine on the streets of U.S. cities and in his native Canada,

which I bet the guy who came up with that is very proud of himself for that one. And here's another. Quote, the former Canadian snowboarder unleashed an avalanche of death and destruction here and abroad. How long do you think these guys come to, like, how long do they take to come up with this stuff? It's like, it's New York Post headline levels, except kind of worse.

It's kind of like heartening to see folks in the public eye who clearly want to be failed journalists instead of want to be, instead of journalists being just want to be failed everything else. I don't know. There might be something aspirational to this job after all. Is there? Wedding, of course, is still a fugitive right now,

but he certainly makes for good headlines like former Olympian wanted for running transnational drug enterprise and ordering several murders added to the FBI's list of 10 most wanted. Which, yeah, he makes the Tamos Wanilus, which has got to feel like kind of an accomplishment, I guess, if you're in that world. Four murder charges and the charges, eight counts total, which include conspiracies to traffic

cocaine, and murder and attempted murder in connection with a continuing criminal enterprise. Wedding is believed to be hiding out of Mexico, but also they say he could potentially be in Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, or even the U.S. and Canada, though I highly doubt that. They also report that he worked super closely with the Sinaloa cartel and is effectively under their protection, which is according to media, which is probably fed that through law enforcement. But Sinola was kind of always been like a federation, you know, and right now it's in the middle of a civil war with Los Chapitos fighting the Maitos. I think it's a third faction as well, which we've covered extensively. So not sure which faction he's riding with or now that he's been

handicapped somewhat if they even care about him that much. This past January, a couple months ago, that informant that wore the wire, Jonathan Acevedo Garcia, is eating lunch at a restaurant in a shopping center in Medellin, Colombia, which, brother, if you are a witness in a federal drug trafficking case, why are you in Colombia and Medellin of all places? Look, don't get me wrong. I get it, man. Paisas, like,

you know, but you got to be smarter. And that goes for all you. Just be smarter. At 2.30 p.m., broad daylight, a guy with a pistol, equipped with a silencer, fires five shots into him and kills the guy. Killer escapes on a motorcycle driven by a partner. They dump it and hop in a truck and escape. Now, Garcia wasn't publicly known as an informant then, so Wedding must have gotten tipped off or just had his suspicions.

Either way, he clearly is still not messing around. And now, the key witness is dead, though I'm assuming they have a pretty airtight case already. Either way, major bungling by the feds for letting this guy get gunned down. And that's where we leave off. Ryan Wedding, $10 million bounty on his head for info leading to his capture, which is kind of wild when you think about it. Still on the run, but for how long? guess it's all been downhill since Salt Lake, you could say. Nice.

Yeah, that's the level, right? That's the level. I finally found it all the way in. Yeah, that was pretty good, dude. I don't know, man. Dude, I'm really worried about these eyepaddle. Dude, you can't take those guys seriously, man. You know, a lot of people have talked about your jawline and how handsome you are.

Don't sweat it, man. You look great. And yeah, that's the episode. As always, if you work at Rockstar Games, give us a call. help us figure something out because we're not desperate. No, we're getting there. Some follow the noise.

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