Former Olympian Ryan Wedding charged with ordering murder of federal witness in unsealed indictment
The U.S. Department of Justice has unsealed a federal grand jury indictment that accuses former Olympian Ryan Wedding of ordering the murder of a federal witness in January 2025.
Wedding, 44, a Canadian national residing in Mexico, is the principal defendant in the newly unsealed indictment that charges him with two additional counts of witness tampering and intimidation, murder, money laundering and drug trafficking. Several other people were also named in the indictment.
According to court documents, Wedding is accused of placing a “multimillion-dollar bounty” on a federal witness involved in a federal narcotics case against him in 2024. Court documents allege that Wedding used the services of other defendants to locate and kill the witness, identified as Victim A, in Columbia.
“The murder of a witness in Colombia earlier this year was a cruel, cold-blooded act that could not go unanswered,” Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said at a news conference Wednesday morning.
Essayli also announced the arrest of 10 people as part of the second phase of a government law enforcement action called “Operation Giant Slalom.”
“Operation Giant Slalom is a dynamic international investigation that involves dedicated partners working together across multiple countries with the common goal of capturing Wedding, bringing justice to multiple murder victims – including a cooperating witness – and ridding communities across North America of deadly drugs,” said Akil Davis, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.
Marriage is also wanted for crimesincluding allegedly running a transnational drug trafficking network that regularly shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine. Wedding’s network would ship the cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and Southern California to Canada and other parts of the United States, federal officials said. In March, he was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.
Wedding competed for the Canadian national team at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics before being convicted in 2010 of trying to buy cocaine from a U.S. government agent.
At the press conference, Attorney General Pamela Bondi described Wedding as the leader of one of the “most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in the world.” She claimed that Wedding’s alleged organization was responsible for “importing approximately 60 tons of cocaine per year into Los Angeles via tractor-trailers from Mexico.”
She said that during the federal government’s investigation into Wedding’s alleged drug ring, 35 people were charged, 2,000 kilos and numerous weapons were seized and $3.2 million in cryptocurrency was recovered.
If convicted of charges related to the witness’s murder, Wedding and the other defendants could face a maximum sentence of life in federal prison, the Justice Department said.
“No one, not even a former Olympic athlete, is above the law,” said Chris Landberg, a senior official in the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
The U.S. State Department’s Narcotics Rewards program is offering a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Wedding.
Anyone with information regarding Wedding or his associates is asked to contact the FBI via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram (platforms not run or controlled by the government) at (424) 495-0614. People can also contact their local FBI office, nearest U.S. embassy or consulate, or submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov.
