(NewsNation) — The U.S. Department of Justice is offering a $15 million reward for the capture of suspected Canadian drug kingpin and former Olympian Ryan Wedding, who is accused of engineering a large narco-drug trafficking and narco-terrorism organization backed by a Mexican drug cartel.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Wednesday the reward has grown by $5 million as new indictments against Wedding and co-conspirators were unsealed this week. The additional charges, which include witness tampering and intimidation, murder, money laundering and drug trafficking, are linked to the January slaying of a government witness scheduled to testify against Wedding.
Bondi said that as part of the investigation, 36 people have been indicted and that 2,000 kilograms of cocaine and multiple weapons have been seized along with $3.2 million in cryptocurrency. Bondi said that Wedding is supported by the Sinaloa drug cartel and is responsible for importing 60 metric tons of cocaine into the United States.
Federal prosecutors allege that Wedding used a Canadian website, The Dirty News, to publish photos of the witness who was shot five times in the head in January outside a restaurant in Colombia. Officials said that the website was shut down this week as the indictments were being unsealed.
“Protecting federal witnesses from retaliation is core to the Department (of Justice’s) mission,” Bondi told reporters at a news conference Wednesday in Washington. “It’s about individual safety, but more, it’s about protecting the rule of law itself. “
In addition to the $15 million reward leading to Wedding’s capture, the Department of Justice is also offering a $2 million reward for information leading to the arrest of those involved in connection with the killing of the witness.
Seven Canadian citizens, including an attorney, were arrested this week in connection with Wedding’s operation, officials said Wednesday.
FBI Director Kash Patel called Wedding a “modern iteration” of Pablo Escobar and a modern-day iteration of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Patel said it is just a matter of time before Wedding is captured and brought to justice.
“You do not get to be a drug kingpin and evade the law,” Patel said.
Wedding, who is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List, is a former Olympic snowboarder who represented Canada in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Prosecutors allege that Wedding used more than 30 aliases in running the billion-dollar-a-year cocaine empire.
Wedding is alleged to have launched the transnational drug organization after he was released from federal prison in 2011 after he was previously convicted on cocaine conspiracy charges.
According to the indictments, Wedding and others allegedly conspired between January and August 2024 to ship bulk quantities of cocaine — weighing hundreds of kilograms — from Southern California to Canada through a Canada-based drug transportation network run by co-conspirators in Ontario, Canada.
Wedding’s organization has allegedly committed violence and murder to achieve its aims, prosecutors said. This includes the November 2023 killing of two members of a family in Ontario, in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment that passed through Southern California.
Additionally, Wedding is linked to the 2024 slaying of another victim in Niagara Falls, Ontario, over a drug debt, federal prosecutors said.
Investigators believe Wedding, who is 6-foot-4 and weighs between 230 and 240 pounds, is living in Mexico.