Uncover - S39 E3: Mr. Perfect | The Most Wanted Olympian

Episode Date: October 22, 2026

Michelle Shephard travels to Mexico City, visiting the last known locations Ryan Wedding was spotted. After almost 10 years on the run, it’s suspected that Wedding is operating his alleged empire from this sprawling metropolis - commanding killings and drug shipments thousands of kilometers away. Alongside Miguel Vega, a ‘fixer’ with contacts inside the Sinaloa Cartel, they trace his footsteps to find out how an alleged narco kingpin could stay hidden for so long. But back in Canada, a lucky traffic stop and a bag full of cash start to break open the case against Wedding. This podcast is a co-production of Uncover from CBC and Suspicion from the Toronto Star.

I've been staring at my offer letter for three days. The salary is exciting, but trying to understand terms like group matching and flexible spending, it feels like reading another language. Congrats on the job. That's huge. But yeah, entering a new workplace comes with a big learning curve. I just want to make sure I'm setting myself up right from day one. It feels like there's so much to figure out about how all of this works. We all feel a bit out of our depth when starting out.

When I made my last jump, I was totally trying to make sense of my new paycheck and my real-life expenses. Glad, it's not just me. It helps to know that everyone goes through this phase. For sure. Honestly, just bringing it up in the first place is half the battle. Landing the job is just the start of the journey. Want to hear how others are navigating the early careers? Check out Count Us In.

A web series where host Michelle Spina sits down with members of Gen Z to share real perspectives and experiences on money, and what comes next. Paid content with Desjardin. Now streaming on CBC Gem. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, Miguel, it's Michelle. How you doing? Hey, Michaud. I'm pretty good. How was your flight? Flight was great. Really good, actually. I'm in Mexico City. I arrived earlier in the day and I've been trying to reach Miguel since I landed.

Miguel, Anhevega, is a busy man with a really intriguing resume. journalist, Hollywood filmmaker, author, and someone who is trusted by Mexico's most ruthless drug dealers, the Sinaloa cartel. How are you doing? How's your day? Good. I'm fine. I'm fighting with the kids. Miguel is also one of the best fixers in the country, and every journalist who reports abroad knows how crucial that role is. He'll be my guide here in Mexico, someone who can provide context, help with translation, and and fix interviews with local sources. Because if you can walk that dangerous tightrope

of telling stories about narcos, about the cops and corruption, about the victims of the drug wars, it's a precious investigative skill. And we're going to try to uncover how one of those narco fugitives has been able to hide for so long. So we're going to plan is to go to different places.

let's find these spots where a Ryan wedding was seen in Mexico City. I'm Michelle Shepard, and from CBC Podcasts and the Toronto Star, this is the most wanted Olympian. Episode 3, Mr. Perfect. Hey, it's so nice to meet you. I was just texting, you can't miss me. I've got the huge microphone. Miguel picks me up in my hotel in the Roman Norton neighborhood,

and I climb in the front. Miguel is pretty much central. casting for what you'd expect the fixer to look like. Stylish, messy gray hair, a salt and pepper beard, Raybans, a light tan. He's also able to calmly juggle phone calls, texts, and chaotic Mexico City traffic while answering my questions about the most wanted Olympian,

Ryan Wedding. Miguel grew up in Kulia Khan, the capital of Sinola State, the heart of Mexico's most influential drug cartel. me and all the kids, all the other kids, we used to dream about becoming a narco. Because they have money, they have power. They used to drive the most expensive luxury cars.

They used to go out with the most beautiful women. So we were like, you know, maybe that's the thing. We should become anarchist. And the sad things at the same time, it's some of these classmates became narcos some of them are dead others are behind their others are on the run

and so for them it was real for them it was real me gladly I didn't follow those footsteps Miguel followed another dream with money power luxury cars and beautiful

women he moved to LA to become a filmmaker his first movie was about a bank robbery Alex where chingados It actually did pretty well, but then his follow-up film was a dud, and the money dried up. No investors will trust me, so I have to go back to journalism.

And one day, this crew from Los Angeles reached out to me, and they were asking, we want to do a documentary in Kulia Khan about narcos. And I said, yeah, I can't help you with it. you know, translation or take you, whatever. So I wasn't expecting of pay, to be honest. But for like three days of work, they gave me $1,000. And back in days, I didn't have no money whatsoever because, you know, disaster at the box office.

That was nearly 20 years ago. So I didn't know, but at the time, I was making a career as a fixer. This is Roma. This is Roma, Norte. This is kind of passionate. from Mexico City. You're going to see lots of foreigners, mostly Americans, but also you see Europeans from France, from Germany, from the UK, and almost anywhere.

Mexico is where authorities believe Ryan Wedding has been living since 2015, since he fled Canada in an RCMP arrest warrant. I assumed, admittedly, based on such research as the TV series Narcos, that he was being protected by the cartel in a safe, house in the state of Sinaloa. Maybe hold up in the mountains. Or perhaps he was in the capital Kulia Khan where Miguel grew up, a city considered one of the world's most dangerous. But Miguel says it's unlikely. If Ryan had some kind of links with the Singulah Kuala Kauri, he was in Kulia Khan at some point. Right now, as we speak, I do not believe he is in Kulia Khan anymore. Really? I don't think so. It's a casino. It's so. It's so.

many checkpoints, all of the city, not to mention that in Kulikan is not a touristic destination. And a guy like Ryan is very tall, it's white. It'll be so easy to spot. But Mexico City, that's another story. Miguel thinks wedding is hiding here somewhere in this sprawling metropolis. It's easy for a guy like Ryan. matter how tall he is, to blend into these neighborhoods. And given the level of corruption here in Mexico, no one is going to towsh a hair of this man. Miguel is quick to dispute another assumption.

Wedding has been compared to a modern-day iteration of Pablo 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. He controls one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in this world. Ryan Wedding is extremely dangerous. He's being protected by the Sinaloa cartel, along with others in the country of Mexico.

Miguel says the comparison between Wedding and other drug lords is overblown. El Chapo, for example, is believed to be responsible for the deaths of over 34,000. thousand people. You know, something that I have noticed, it's once a narco, it's like in the spotlight, he becomes like a target. So the U.S., all these international governments, what they do, it's inflate the figure of this narco, and then they're going to capture eventually. Trust me, make no mistake, they will get him. They're going to inflate Ryan, and I'm not saying he's not the narco. I'm sure because, you know, I'm true he is. But, you know, he's just a similar narco. Before I arrived, Miguel had reached out to his contacts both here and in Kulia Khan,

sources in law enforcement and sources in the Sinaloa cartel. Nobody knows anything about riot. Nothing. Like, the man is like a ghost. It just actually makes more sense in a way. because you're thinking, how can this Canadian be so important to this cartel? I mean, what connections and skills does he have that are so valued? So the idea that maybe he's been elevated in his status in part by the FBI, by the RCMP, not saying he's not dangerous, not saying he's not anarcho, and now he is allegedly responsible for these murders.

But is he an El Chapo? What I'm trying to say, maybe, yes, Ryan has some connections with this. in North Carolina cartel, but that's just about it. He is known and he's big somewhere else, like in this case, and it was somewhere in Canada. Right. The FBI has put wedding on their top 10 most wanted list, and his name is certainly well known in Canada.

In Mexico, though, Miguel says he's a nobody. But that's about to change. As I'm in Mexico with Miguel, I hear his name. on a popular radio call-in show. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico has just put out a statement about wedding with a hotline to call. The report

about Ryan-James wedding, communicate with the Embachada of the U.S.S. The report is telling Mexicans, if you have seen him or have information about him, your call is crucial. Is it possible that could be in this plaza? There's like a plaza on the other. Yeah, it's possible?

Mass somewhere. Disculpe. You know if there's a Starbucks for here, you know, if there's a storebox for here here, what? Starbucks.

When law enforcement agencies held a press conference to announce a reward for the capture of Ryan Wedding, they also released a wanted poster. FBI, 10 most wanted fugitive, it said at the top.

Then, Ryan, James, wedding. And underneath, there are two photos of him, one in a ball cap, and a Louis Vuitton t-shirt, and he's walking, and another where he seems to be sitting hunched over a phone. The photos are dated 2024. His face will be on billboards, all over social media,

and news reports internationally. With that many eyes on him, the public becomes our strongest partner. Our chances of catching him with the public support remain very high. I'm now happy to take a few questions. In fact, there was just one question from a report. reporter in the room. The photos of wedding were taken as part of surveillance being done on him. I see there from 2024. Is there a reason that he slipped out of custody after that if they knew where he was? Yeah, we're not going to comment on where these photos came from, but you're right,

they were taken in 2024 as part of our overall investigation. Any other questions? Okay, thank you for your time today. Oh, I think that's the Starbucks right up there. See, straight ahead, you see the little mermaid? Oh, I see, I see, I see, the long way. A CBC investigation had geolocated one of the surveillance photos of Ryan Wedding to this business area in Mexico City called Santa Fe. And in January 2024, we know that wedding came to a Starbucks here to meet two other Canadians. One was Andrew Clark, Wedding's alleged second-in-command.

The other was Jonathan Acevedo Garcia, who wedding met during his time incarcerated at Reeves' correctional institution. He had known him for 13 years. In court documents, police say they believe Jonathan had been working with wedding since about 2013, helping arrange cocaine shipments to Canada and launder money back to wedding in Mexico. They met at this Starbucks, presumably, to talk business, while inside, authorities were surveilling their every move. For a long time, these were the last.

last known photos of wedding out in the public. The FBI would later post a $15 million reward for his capture. The question is, if they had eyes on him for this meeting, what happened next? Did they continue to watch him? And if so, like a decade earlier in Canada, had even lost? What we do know is that soon after this meeting, wedding was about to learn that someone he trusted had betrayed him. There's one more area Miguel wants to show me. It's only about 30 minutes from where I'm staying in Roma Norte, but it's a very different part of the city.

Wedding blends in vests in tourist areas, but that's not where Narcos tend to do business. Now we're in a huge black market, hundreds and hundreds of stalls for as far as you can see in every direction, selling just about everything you can think of. Tipito. The P2, it's a neighborhood in Mexico City.

It's a dodgy neighborhood. It's quite dodgy. This neighborhood is ruled by a gang. It's called Launeon. They are very powerful. This is such a big market for the entire city. We're talking about the city with 26 million population. So it's quite big.

So for, you know, our camping, this is cold. So if you want to control Mexico City, you start right here. Just beyond the sprawling black market, the streets narrow. And Miguel becomes a little quieter. He's looking for something he wants to show me that's a popular destination for Narcos. I'm trying to find this place. There's like shrine of Santa Morti.

You know, Santa Morti, something, you know, most Narcos believe in. Buenos, good days. Discoupes, where is the Altar of Santa Morte? Santa Morte, the Lady of Death, revered for her powers of protection in this life and safe passage to the afterlife. Ah, lister. Thank you.

They belong to a gang. They are watching. You think they are just talking or just waiting? They are waiting for a car to park. At the same time, they are telling the car to... They are like informers. Lookouts.

Okay. Okay. You see the look out? Yeah. And there she is. A skeleton in a white veil and what looks like a wedding gown. Dozens and dozens of flower bouquets are at her feet. Candles lit around her ghostly upright frame, which is encased in a glass box.

There's an offering of fresh apples on the altar before her. Would you come here with your family? Would you feel safe coming here? I wouldn't come here with my family at all. I mean, I usually come here only for work. People, you know, people are mostly nice, hardworking class, you know, families, but make no mistakes.

Cartel is here. And trust me, they are watching. Many people worship Santa Morte. But according to Miguel, the Narcos, or their hired hitmen, the Sicarios, also come to her shrine to ask for her protection, before they kill. And in the narco world where billions of dollars of drug trade is at stake,

the mentality is very much kill or be killed. Killings, when it comes to Ryan Wedding's organization, that allegedly go well beyond Mexico City. I just tallied up my cost for this semester. And between tuition, campus fees, and a very expensive textbook I've barely opened, my budget is stretched thin. Yeah, it's a lot to juggle at once.

Right? It feels like everyone else somehow got a manual on how to navigate student life and figure out their finances, and I missed the memo. Trust me, nobody got a manual. When I started school last year, I felt the exact same way. Everyone's just figuring it out as they go. Honestly, just knowing other people are asking the same questions makes me feel a whole lot better. You're definitely not the only one trying to make sense of it all. Navigating school and your finances comes with a lot of big questions. If you're figuring out your next steps, check out Count Us In. A web series where host Michelle Spina sits down with members of Gen Z to share real perspectives and experiences on money, life, and what comes next.

Paid content with Desjardin. Now streaming on CBC Gem. CENT isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, one thing. thousand doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough, defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards

new heights. And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo.ca. So that day, our team, the four-core office, got called in on a bit of a special assignment. Constable Joe Kalia is a police officer in York region, an area north of Toronto. and I've come here to talk to him about the morning of April 14th, 2024. He was on a shift to cover a funeral for someone who had been murdered. There's often more security for such events, cops on hand to keep watch

in case someone comes to settle the score. Yeah, it was a crummy day, yeah. So we'd start up at six and just kind of get ready for the day and just talk about our assignments and where we're going to, you know, plan our day out. You know, when there are those moments in life, That don't seem like a big deal at the time, but then later take on such importance? Well, this is one of those moments. Once we got set up at the funeral and just got up in our positions,

we were alerted to a suspicious vehicle that was kind of loitering off to the side near the burial plot. At that point, there was already a massive crowd around the burial plot. So there was a bit of a concern because they had noticed that suspicious vehicle. We were in full uniform in our police car. part of that is wanting to be out there so they can see we're there just to kind of deter anything from happening here. They had a concern because somebody saw somebody climb from the driver's seat into the back seat of the vehicle,

and they saw a head keep popping up every so often looking over those side panels over the window. So it was weird, suspicious. So I wheeled over to it, and I got right up behind him, just to make it very clear, police are watching you. No funny business. He parks behind this dark green, Ford Explorer and runs the plates.

It comes up as stolen. And just as he starts to talk with colleagues and figure out their next move... The driver left. He started leaving. Like driving away? He just started driving off. He zipped out of a cemetery there pretty quickly. He wanted to get away from me. And I knew that

risk of getting into the pursuit was pretty high, so I just tried to keep eyes on him as best I could, but he took off and we kind of lost him for a bit. Constable Clea meets with his sergeant and they talk about what to do next. How do they find the driver? And then, a lucky break. And sure enough, my sergeant picks him coming back up down the street. I could see he had a look in his eyes.

He was second guessing whether or not he was actually going to pull over for me. And I was like, we're not letting this car get away again. So I just immediately engaged my emergency lights and cut him off. The car is boxed in. Constable Clea, goes up to the passenger's side and lets him know the SUV he's driving is listed as stolen. Do you remember anything about his demeanor or what you thought when you came up, how he was acting? Yeah, and he's like, oh, I just, you know, a friend gave me this car.

I had no idea it was stolen. He was very casual about it, very nonchalant, and, you know, no problem officer. Yeah, here's my ID, no big deal. So I go back to my cruiser just to look up the driver up and I identified him as Malie Cunningham. He discovers that Cunningham, a 22-year-old from Toronto, had recently been released on parole after serving a sentence for attempted murder. And now, like, the alarm bell start ringing,

and okay, there's a little more here than just the guy driving a stolen car. Who knows, though? Because at the end of the day, still, all I have is, you know, yeah, some suspicious activity at the funeral. Yeah, he's in a stolen car, but you don't know. Because he hasn't actually broken any laws, right? Like, he's not in breach of his parole at this point.

You don't know it? Yeah, no. And yeah, while he's in possession of a stolen car, did he know it? Couldn't prove it at the time. So we'll give him the benefit of the doubt, and I just tell him he's going to hit on his way. But I tell him, like, we're taking the car away. So if you need anything out of that car, you've got to let me know. And he was like, listen, my phone is sitting there.

I need my phone. That white iPhone there is mine. I was like, okay, I'll grab it for you. And he was trying to go into the car to grab it. I was like, no, no, I'll grab your stuff out of the car. Because I've already seized the car, and now it's the police's car. you can have it after all your belongings is after

but you can't go back into the car so he's like and I just have a grocery bag in the back that I need so I grab his phone for him and I go to reach back to grab the green bag it was a dollar am a shopping bag

the big ones so I grab it and I'm just picking it up and I'm trying to pull it towards the front and I'm like this is it's kind of heavy and sure enough like as I'm going to hand it over to him you can see just kind of poking out it's just stacks of cash

and it's just stacks and stacks of cash and just all wrapped up in elastic bands and I don't know about you I've never carried cash around like that much in a grocery bag I'd be scared, waitless about it so definitely like alarm bells are like that that ain't right So Constable Clea tells Malik Cunningham

that they have a problem He's got a record He's in a stolen vehicle And this bag of cash Looks suspicious to say the least. And that's not all that's in the car. There were also walkie-talkies, masks, binoculars, and a rope. Kalia says he found a receipt from Canadian tire where all these items were bought just the day before. And perhaps the most damning, he found seven rounds of nine

millimeter ammunition. Now the constable has the grounds to take him into custody. So we get back to the station. So I tell him, we're going to give you another phone call to a lawyer. Constable Clea gives Cunningham back his iPhone, but doesn't go far and tells him... I'm going to have to be over your shoulder because I can't risk you accessing something you're not supposed to, so tell them just straight to your contacts, pull up the two contacts you need me to call for you, and then we're going to leave it at that. You had no idea at the time just how important that was. No.

My head was spinning. I had never seen that much money, just laying there. It was a lot of cash. Guessed easily over $100. $100,000. So we're just like, this is for the professionals, this is way above my pay grade. I'm not touching this. Bag it up, send it up to the finance guys to look at, because it's not going to be me. Constable Clea goes back to work. It was just a traffic stop, right? Yeah, like huge quantity of cash seized, like mind-blowing

amount of cash seized, but not to the point where I was like, oh, this is going to be something big. It wasn't until a while later. I was just, I was just scrolling across news articles on. on the internet and I saw the Toronto Star article. And then I was like, wait a second. That name's familiar. I turned to my sergeant and I was like, wait a second. Mr. Perfect, the alleged hitman, goes, quote, give me the easiest one first.

Toronto Star journalist Calvie Leon wrote the story that Constable Kaliah would later spot on the internet. And she's reading me texts that were found on that white iPhone belonging to Malik Cunningham. He's using the alias, Mr. Perfect. And he's being given instructions. He then said this would be a, quote, driveway job and that it would pay 100K. After he instructed Mr. Perfect to, quote, blow this guy's head off. Cunningham is given a hit list of enemies to kill, people who supposedly owed money to the drug ring.

Authorities believe it was sent by Andrew Clark, Wedding's Close Associate, with instructions to kill the first person on the list. a man named Randy Fader. Randy Fader was a red-headed, broad-shouldered Niagara Falls man. He was a husband, a father. He had two young girls and multiple siblings and was very close with his family. He was such an amazing father and uncle. He made sure every holiday was at his house, and he always went out of his way to do special things.

for the kids. This is Randy's mom, Claire. Like all the kids at Christmas time, they all had matching pajamas. Easter, he would always go and find a spot, and he'd always hide eggs and then bring the kids in and have Easter egg hunts. On April 1st, 2024, Easter Monday, Randy was at home with his family. RJ had invited us over. He made my favorite. and it was beef strogan off.

Claire calls Randy R.J. for Randy Jr. On their way to his house, Claire and her husband get a call from one of her other children. And I said, Mom, come down. RJ's been shot. Nobody told me how serious it was or anything. By time I got there, there was yellow tape up everywhere, and I just went running and running. And I just ran. and they stopped me

and they stopped me what Claire would later find out is that a friend had called Randy to go out the friend pulls into the driveway to pick him up he gets into the car and he realizes oh I actually forgot something inside I'm going to go grab it and just as he was stepping out

that is when the gunman approached him from behind and shot in point blank execution style in the driveway Fader's wife was actually in the front window banging on the glass telling him, look behind you, look behind you, there's somebody there as the gunman was approaching. She thought it was an April Fool's joke.

And when she noticed, she started banging, just screaming and banging. They said he just raised the gun, pop, one shot. And it had a silencer on it. So it was just like pop. and then he was just down. He just went down. And the only thing that I can say is that he did not suffer.

He didn't suffer at all. It was quick. That traffic stop and the iPhone discovery were a huge break in the case. Now, police would link Malik Cunningham not only to Randy Fader's murder, but to weddings alleged drug ring.

That wasn't all the information that seized iPhone contained. According to court records, police claim there are texts about Cunningham attending some type of hitman military training in Mexico days before Fader's murder. The trip and the training was allegedly organized by Andrew Clark, and Clark had reportedly sent Cunningham a text that read, a nice 1.5 mil this year, if we can keep knocking them out of the park, quick. authorities have never given an explicit reason why Randy was targeted. They've only said he was known to Canadian police

to be involved in international drug trafficking, something his mother disputes. But what she and the rest of the world would later learn is that the hit on her son was part of a spate of violence police believe is linked back to Wedding's organization. Five separate shootings, three people dead. Police now saying they believe they're all. All connected.

Chilling details about a triple shooting in Caledon last month. Niagara police are investigating the death of a man who was gunned down in front of his family home. A man is dead after a brazen daylight shooting in Brampton yesterday. Slowly, police were starting to build a case that was tying crimes in Canada and elsewhere back to Ryan Wedding, who continued to hide in Mexico. The violence and murders were adding up. But the case against Wedding looked like it may be falling apart. We put an alert out and it was like,

key witness in Ryan Wedding case no longer going to testify a trial because he was assassinated in Columbia. Just like WTF, what the hell did we just learn? That's on the next episode of the Most Wanted Olympian. This podcast is a co-production between CBC podcasts and the Toronto Star. Our series was written and produced by Phelan Johnson,

Calvi Leon, and me, Michelle Shepard. At CBC, Emily Connell is our coordinating producer. Our senior producer is Andrew Friesen, mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the senior manager and RF Narani is the director of CBC podcasts. Additional audio from CHCHH News. Special thanks to Thomas DeGle and the CBC Visual Investigations Unit. For the Toronto Star, Calvie Leon led our reporting.

Our producer is Julia DeLerentis Johnston. Team editors are Sean Padden and Ed Tubb. Keith Pinell is Deputy Managing Editor. J.P. Foso is our executive producer. And special thanks to executive editor Grant Ellis and editor-in-chief Nicole McIntyre. Tune in next week for an all-new episode of the Most Wanted Olympian, or you can listen to the full series now

by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts or by subscribing to the CBC True Crime channel on YouTube. Links in the description. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.