Ryan Wedding pleads not guilty to conspiracy charges

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Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding was in a U.S. federal court Monday to face charges accusing him of running a billion-dollar international drug-trafficking ring and orchestrating a number of murders.

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Wedding, 44, pleaded not guilty to drug and murder conspiracy charges, according to NBC News.

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Wedding turned himself in at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City last week following a year-long manhunt by authorities in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Colombia and the Dominican Republic to track him down.

U.S. authorities said the former snowboarder, who participated in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, was on the lam in Mexico for more than 10 years. He was on the list of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives with a $15-million reward offered for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

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Cocaine, money and murder

Law enforcement officials accused Wedding of moving as much as 60 tons of cocaine through Colombia, Mexico, Canada and California and suspected that he was working with the blessing of Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa Cartel. He was indicted in 2024 on a number of charges related to drugs and murder, including allegedly running a billion-dollar drug-running group that was the largest supplier of cocaine to Canada.

Wedding is charged with directing the 2023 slayings of two members of a Canadian family as payback for a stolen shipment of drugs and for ordering another’s death over a drug debt. Added to those charges is organizing the murder of a Colombian would-be witness to dodge extradition to the U.S.

Canada has issued its own charges against Wedding dating to 2015.

— With files from the Associated Press.

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