Few life stories today rival the fascinating and tragic story of Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic athlete who became one of the largest cocaine traffickers in the Americas. Tracked for years by US authorities and placed on the FBI’s most wanted list, on October 19 the Treasury Department announced sanctions against him and his support network. This network of individuals and companies includes a Canadian lawyer and jeweler, a former member of the Italian special forces and a Colombian pimp who runs a prostitution ring in Mexico.
“Wedding, a former Olympic snowboarder for Team Canada (…) is an extremely violent criminal believed to be responsible for the murder of numerous people abroad, including U.S. citizens. Wedding remains a fugitive from justice, currently hiding in Mexico, where he continues to direct drug trafficking, murder and other serious criminal activity,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also noted that the State Department increased the reward offered for the marriage from $10 million to $15 million.
The statement continues: “(Wedding) is responsible for trafficking multi-ton quantities of cocaine through Colombia and Mexico for distribution in the United States and Canada. His criminal organization uses cryptocurrency to move and launder the proceeds of drug trafficking, concealing large sums of illicit wealth. According to the FBI,” the statement adds, “Wedding has ordered dozens of assassinations around the world, including in the United States, Canada and Latin America. He employs highly sophisticated methods in both the planning and execution of these murders, demonstrating a level of coordination and ruthlessness that made him one of the most dangerous fugitives in the world.” US authorities have charged Wedding with cocaine trafficking, murder, attempted murder and racketeering, among other crimes.
The Treasury sanctions mean the assets of Wedding and nine other individuals and companies who were part of his alleged criminal operation will be frozen. OFAC listed an alleged former Mexican security agent, Edgar Vazquez Alvarado, identified as the head of its security team. “Vazquez, also known as ‘the General,’ provides protection to Wedding in Mexico and uses law enforcement sources to identify targets for Wedding. Vazquez is believed to be a former Mexican law enforcement officer with ties to senior Mexican law enforcement officials,” the statement read.
In addition to Vazquez, the list includes Wedding’s wife, Miryam Andrea Castillo Moreno, 34, originally from Nuevo León, in northern Mexico; his “Colombian girlfriend”, Daniela Alejandra Acuña Macías, a 23-year-old whom authorities place near Morelia, Michoacán; an alleged Colombian collaborator of the Canadian, Carmen Yelinet Valoyes, who, according to OFAC, runs a high-level prostitution ring in Mexico City; Canadian lawyer Deepak Balwant Paradkar, who “introduced Wedding to the drug traffickers who transported Wedding’s cocaine and also helped Wedding with bribery and murder”; Canadian jeweler Rolan Sokolovski; and former Italian special forces member Gianluca Tiepolo, the latter two being part of his money laundering network.
The activities attributed to each of them are multiple. Miryam Castillo, his wife, is accused, for example, of “laundering drug proceeds on Wedding’s behalf and of helping him carry out acts of violence.” Carmen Valoyes is accused of “aiding Wedding in the murder of a federal witness in January 2025” and introducing the alleged crime boss to his girlfriend, Daniela Acuña. The witness in question was Jonathan Christopher Acevedo, a Colombian-Canadian killed in Medellín, Colombia. Acevedo had served a sentence years earlier in Canada for drug trafficking.
The list goes on: OFAC also claims that Acuña received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wedding, knowing his activities, and that he “helped Wedding obtain information about his rivals.” Paradkar, the Treasury says, allowed “Wedding and his associates to intercept privileged communications between Paradkar and his other clients, many of whom Wedding wished to kill.”
Regarding his money laundering network, OFAC finds that Sokolovski, the Canadian jeweler, “oversaw the accounting for Wedding’s organization and laundered his funds through his jewelry business, which operates under the trade name “Diamond Tsar” and maintains a store in Toronto, Ontario. In addition to using his business as a front for laundering, Sokolovski transferred millions of dollars in drug proceeds using cryptocurrency, concealing the source of Wedding’s profits.” For his part, Tiepolo “worked closely with Sokolovski to procure and manage Wedding’s physical assets, including high-end vehicles,” such as a 2002 Mercedes CLK-GTR, valued at $13 million, which was seized by the FBI.
Marriage is an enigma to sociology departments everywhere. A precocious snowboarder, he joined the Canadian national team at 15 and, at 21, competed in the parallel giant slalom at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. Known by the aliases “King” and “James Conrad”, named after a character in the 2017 film Kong: Skull Island Marriage comes from an affluent middle-class family in British Columbia. After the Olympics, he began studying at a university in the greater Vancouver area, a degree funded by his parents.
But his academic adventure lasted only two years, as Rolling Stone recalls journalist Jesse Hyde, who has followed him since 2009. Attracted by the nightlife and violent local crime scene of those years, and by the control of the marijuana market, Wedding began his career as a security guard in the city’s clubs and bars, simultaneously starting a massive marijuana cultivation operation. In 2006, the authorities seized his warehouses, plants and equipment and Wedding had to start all over again. After some ventures in the local real estate market, the Canadian entered the big leagues of drug trafficking and tried to enter the cocaine market.
Unfortunately for Wedding, one of his first purchases, monitored by the FBI in Southern California, went awry. Authorities arrested Wedding and sent him to prison. It was 2008. The Canadian spent three years in detention, between San Diego and Texas, until the United States agreed to transfer him to Canada to finish serving his sentence. It seems that the years spent in prison in the southern United States served as training ground for the trafficker, who, upon returning to his home country, returned to work.
Little is known about Wedding’s movements over the past 10 years. Like the United States, Mexican authorities place it south of the Rio Grande, as acknowledged by federal security secretary Omar García Harfuch in March. The Mexican Navy arrested one of its associates, Andrew Clark, in Jalisco last October. US authorities believe the Sinaloa Cartel, or one of its splinter factions, protects and collaborates with it. He is known to have held meetings in Mexico City for the past two years. He is blond and muscular, over 6′3″ tall. It seems unlikely that anyone will be able to find him.
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