LOS ANGELES (NewsNation) — A former Olympian and Canadian national was added Thursday to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced.
The U.S. State Department has offered a reward of up to $10 million for the arrest and/or conviction of Ryan Wedding, 43, a former Olympic snowboarder.
Wedding is wanted for allegedly running a transnational drug trafficking network that shipped large amounts of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and Southern California to Canada and other locations in the U.S. He is also wanted on multiple murder charges, according to the FBI.
“Wedding went from shredding powder on the slopes at the Olympics to distributing powder cocaine on the streets of U.S. cities and in his native Canada,” said Akil Davis, the assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “The alleged murders of his competitors make Wedding a very dangerous man, and his addition to the list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, coupled with a major reward offer by the State Department, will make the public our partner so that we can catch up with him before he puts anyone else in danger.”
Wedding, whose aliases include “El Jefe,” “Giant,” “Public Enemy,” “James Conrad King,” and “Jesse King,” was born in Thunder Bay, Canada, and competed in the giant slalom snowboarding competition during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.