Ex-Olympian wanted by FBI for allegedly running deadly drug ring
Former Olympic snowboarder and Canadian national Ryan Wedding, 43, has been placed on the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives list for allegedly running a violent transnational drug trafficking network.Wedding is wanted for allegedly shipping hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and southern California, to Canada and US locations, and for orchestrating multiple murders and an attempted murder to further these drug crimes.The US is offering a reward of up to $10m (£7.7m) for information leading to Wedding's arrest or conviction. Investigators believe he is living in Mexico, but have not ruled out his presence in the US, Canada, other Latin American countries or elsewhere.
It was not clear if he has a lawyer.Wedding competed in Giant Slalom snowboarding for Canada during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. His aliases include "El Jefe," "Giant," "Public Enemy," "James Conrad King," and "Jesse King," the FBI said.In June 2024, Wedding and his accomplice Andrew Clark, 34, also Canadian, were charged in California with running a continuing criminal enterprise, committing murder in connection with the enterprise and assorted drug crimes, and conspiring to possess, distribute, and export cocaine.Clark was arrested last October by Mexican authorities and was among 29 fugitives extradited to the US from Mexico last week.The US indictment alleges that Wedding and Clark directed the 20 November 2023 murders of two family members in Ontario, Canada, in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment that passed through southern California. Another family member survived the shooting but was left with serious physical injuries, the FBI said.Wedding and Clark allegedly also ordered the murder of another victim on 18 May 2024 over a drug debt, according to the FBI."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," Akil Davis, the assistant director of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office, said in a press release on Thursday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
3 hours ago
- The Independent
Under Patel, FBI heightens focus on violent crime, illegal immigration. Other threats abound, too
FOR MOVEMENT AT 12:01 A.M. ON MONDAY JUNE 9TH When the FBI arrested an accused leader of the MS-13 gang, Kash Patel was there to announce the case, trumpeting it as a step toward returning "our communities to safety.' Weeks later, when the Justice Department announced the seizure of $510 million in illegal narcotics bound for the U.S, the FBI director joined other law enforcement leaders in front of a Coast Guard ship in Florida and stacks of intercepted drugs to highlight the haul. His presence was meant to signal the premium the FBI is placing on combating violent crime, drug trafficking and illegal immigration, concerns that have leapfrogged up the agenda in what current and former law enforcement officials say amounts to a rethinking of priorities and mission at a time when the country is also confronting increasingly sophisticated national security threats from abroad. A revised FBI priority list on its website places 'Crush Violent Crime' at the top, bringing the bureau into alignment with the vision of President Donald Trump, who has made a crackdown on illegal immigration, cartels and transnational gangs a cornerstone of his administration. Patel has said he wants to 'get back to the basics.' His deputy, Dan Bongino, says the FBI is returning to 'its roots.' Patel says the FBI remains focused on some of the same concerns, including China, that have dominated headlines in recent years, and the bureau said in a statement that its commitment to investigating international and domestic terrorism has not changed. That intensifying threat was laid bare over the past month by a spate of violent acts, most recently a Molotov cocktail attack on a Colorado crowd by an Egyptian man who authorities say overstayed his visa and yelled 'Free Palestine.' 'The FBI continuously analyzes the threat landscape and allocates resources and personnel in alignment with that analysis and the investigative needs of the Bureau,' the FBI said in a statement. 'We make adjustments and changes based on many factors and remain flexible as various needs arise.' Signs of restructuring abound. The Justice Department has disbanded an FBI-led task force on foreign influence and the bureau has moved to dissolve a key public corruption squad in its Washington field office, people familiar with the matter have told The Associated Press. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has proposed steep budget cuts for the FBI, and there's been significant turnover in leadership ranks as some veteran agents with years of experience have been pushed from their positions. Some former officials are concerned the stepped-up focus on violent crime and immigration — areas already core to the mission of agencies including the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — risks deflecting attention from some of the complicated criminal and national security threats for which the bureau has long borne primary if not exclusive responsibility for investigating. 'If you're looking down five feet in front of you, looking for gang members and I would say lower-level criminals, you're going to miss some of the more sophisticated strategic issues that may be already present or emerging,' said Chris Piehota, who retired from the FBI in 2020 as an executive assistant director. A greater focus on immigration Enforcement of immigration laws has long been the principal jurisdiction of immigration agents tasked with arresting people in the U.S. illegally along with border agents who police points of entry. Since Trump's inauguration, the FBI has assumed greater responsibility for that work, saying it's made over 10,000 immigration-related arrests. Patel has highlighted the arrests on social media, doubling down on the administration's promise to prioritize immigration enforcement. Agents have been dispatched to visit migrant children who crossed the U.S-Mexico border without parents in what officials say is an effort to ensure their safety. Field offices have been directed to commit manpower to immigration enforcement. The Justice Department has instructed the FBI to review files for information about those illegally in the U.S. and provide it to the Department of Homeland Security unless doing so would compromise an investigation. And photos on the FBI's Instagram account depict agents with covered faces and tactical gear alongside detained subjects, with a caption saying the FBI is 'ramping up' efforts with immigration agents to locate 'dangerous criminals.' 'We're giving you about five minutes to cooperate,' Bongino said on Fox News about illegal immigrants. 'If you're here illegally, five minutes, you're out.' That's a rhetorical shift from prior leadership. Though Patel's direct predecessor, Christopher Wray, warned about the flow of fentanyl through the southern border and the possibility migrants determined to commit terrorism could illegally cross through, he did not characterize immigration enforcement as core to the FBI's mission. A mandate to 'crush violent crime' There's precedent for the FBI to rearrange priorities to meet evolving threats, though for the past two decades countering terrorism has remained a constant atop the agenda. Then-Director Robert Mueller transformed the FBI after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks into a national security, intelligence-gathering agency. Agents were reassigned from investigations into drugs, violent crime and white-collar fraud to fight terrorism. In a top 10 priority list from 2002, protecting the U.S. from terrorism was first. Fighting violent crime was near the bottom, above only supporting law enforcement partners and technology upgrades. The FBI's new list of priorities places 'Crush Violent Crime' as a top pillar alongside 'Defend the Homeland," though FBI leaders have also sought to stress that counterterrorism remains the bureau's principal mandate. Wray often said he was hard-pressed to think of a time when the FBI was facing so many elevated threats at once. At the time of his departure last January, the FBI was grappling with elevated terrorism concerns; Iranian assassination plots on U.S. soil; Chinese spying and hacking of Americans' cell phones; ransomware attacks against hospitals; and Russian influence operations aimed at sowing disinformation. Testifying before lawmakers last month, Patel took care to note the surge in terrorism threats following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas and a Chinese espionage threat he said had yielded investigations in each of the bureau's offices. But the accomplishments he dwelled on first concerned efforts to 'take dangerous criminals off our streets,' including the arrests of three suspects on the 'Ten Most Wanted' list, and large drug seizures. Rounding out the priority list are two newcomers: 'Rebuild Public Trust' and 'Fierce Organizational Accountability.' Those reflect claims amplified by Patel and Bongino that the bureau had become politicized through its years of investigations of Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago home was searched by agents for classified documents in 2022. Close allies of Trump, both men have committed to disclose files from past investigations, including into Russian election interference and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, that have fueled grievances against the bureau. They've also pledged to examine matters that have captivated attention in conservative circles, like the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade. Employees have spent hours poring over documents from the sex trafficking case against financier Jeffrey Epstein, a favorite subject of conspiracy theorists, to prepare them for release. Patel had forecast his interest in rejiggering priorities long before becoming director, including by saying that if he ran the bureau, he would 'let good cops be good cops' and push agents into the field. A critic as a House Republican staffer of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, which he calls an example of politicized law enforcement, he had said that he would support breaking off the FBI's 'intel shops' to focus on crime-fighting. James Gagliano, a retired FBI supervisor, said he would like to see more specific information about the new priorities but was heartened by an enhanced violent crime focus so long as other initiatives weren't abandoned. 'Mission priorities change,' Gagliano said. 'The threat matrix changes. You've got to constantly get out in front of that.' Terrorism threats persist The Trump administration has touted several terrorism successes, including the arrests of a suspected participant in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 American servicemembers and of an ex-Michigan National Guard member on charges of plotting a military base attack on behalf of the Islamic State. But the administration is also employing a broad definition of what it believes constitutes terrorism. FBI and Justice Department officials see the fight against transnational gangs as part of their counterterrorism mandate, taking advantage of the Trump administration's designation of the violent street gangs MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations to bring terrorism-related charges against defendants, including a Venezuelan man suspected of being a high-ranking TdA member and a Utah father-son suspected of providing material support to a Mexican cartel — a charge typically used for cases involving groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaida. A former Justice Department terrorism prosecutor, Patel has called the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces — interagency units in the bureau's 55 field offices — as 'shining examples' of its mission. Those task forces spent years pursuing suspects in the Capitol riot but have now been enlisted to track down cartel members, he has said. After an Egyptian man whose work authorization in the U.S. had expired was arrested on charges of using a homemade flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to attack a group drawing attention to Israeli hostages in Gaza, administration officials held up the case as proof of their philosophy that immigration enforcement is tantamount to protecting national security. The FBI says its domestic terrorism investigations continue uninterrupted, though Patel at times has discussed the threat in different terms than Wray, who led the bureau as it investigated the Capitol riot and who cited it as evidence of the dangers of homegrown extremists. At hearings last month, Patel pointed to a string of arsons and vandalism acts at Tesla dealerships as domestic terrorism acts that commanded the FBI's resources and attention. As it reconfigures its resources, the FBI has moved to reassign some agents focused on domestic terrorism to a new task force set up to investigate the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and its aftermath, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel moves. One national security concern Patel has preached continuity on in public is the threat from China, which he said in a recent Fox News interview keeps him up at night. Wray often called China the gravest long-term threat to national security, and when he stepped aside in January the FBI was contending with an espionage operation that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. There are signs of a broader national security realignment. A task force tracking foreign influence, like Russia's attempts to interfere in American democracy, was disbanded and the Justice Department has scaled back criminal enforcement of a statute requiring registration of U.S. lobbying on behalf of foreign entities. All of that concerns retired FBI supervisor Frank Montoya, a longtime counterintelligence official who says fentanyl and drug cartels are not 'existential' threats in the same way Russia and China are. When it comes to complicated, interagency espionage work, the FBI, he said, has always 'been the glue that made it all work.' Patel makes no apologies for priorities he says come from the White House. 'President Trump has set some priorities out in a new focus for federal law enforcement,' he has said. 'The FBI has heard those directions, and we are determined to deliver on our crime-fighting and national security mission with renewed vigor.'
Daily Record
4 hours ago
- Daily Record
Bill to keep child kidnap and murder plot trio in Scots jail hits £1m
They are still within the Scottish prison after losing a last-ditch appeal against their extradition to the US, after the FBI identified them as being behind a twisted scheme to kidnap five children and kill their parents. Three US citizens wanted over a child snatch murder plot have racked up a £1million bill for taxpayers as they remain in Scotland seven years later. Valerie Hayes, Gary Reburn and Frank Amnott were found living in Glasgow in 2018 after the FBI identified them as being behind a twisted scheme to kidnap five children and kill their parents. They are still within the Scottish prison estate more than two years after losing a last-ditch appeal against their extradition to the US. So far they have cost the public purse at least £205,278 in legal aid fees and an estimated £750,000 to £800,000 in prison costs. Scots Tory community safety spokeswoman, Sharon Dowey, said the huge bill would spark fury. She said: 'The Scottish public, who are footing the bill, will demand this case is brought to a swift conclusion.' US prosecutors say ringleader Hayes fled to Glasgow after botching an abduction plot, which 'read like a script from a bad horror movie'. They say the mum duped childless couple Frank and Jennifer Amnott into believing she was a government agent before convincing them to help her carry out the abduction in return for a child of their own. The US Attorney's Office claim Hayes, who was living in Maryland with boyfriend Reburn, fed the couple lies that she was in intelligence and three of her kids had been kidnapped and were being held by two families in the Old Order Mennonites community in Dayton. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. Prosecutors say Hayes, Reburn and Frank Amnott planned to enter the first house and hold the parents at gunpoint. After Hayes secured the two kids, Reburn and Frank Amnott would kill the parents before driving to the second house, force entry, and perform a similar murder. A Department of Justice affidavit said Hayes was disguised as a Mennonite when a parent opened the door and was held at gunpoint. Another parent fled and dialled 911 and, when cops arrived, found Frank Amnott holding the parent hostage. Prosecutors say Hayes and Reburn fled to Maryland to meet Amnott's wife before all three fled to Scotland, where they were later arrested. In 2019, Frank Amnott pled guilty to conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to kill witnesses and firearm offences. He said Hayes was central to the July 2018 plot. But Hayes says she was in the UK having been granted temporary asylum as a victim of 'systematic torture' at the hands of a US intelligence officer. Their appeals against extradition were thrown out of the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court in London. In 2023, the case was sent to the European Court of Human Rights, a last chance at avoiding extradition. Hayes and Reburn, listed in court papers as being held at HMP Edinburgh, and Amnott, listed as HMP Polmont, have complained that their extradition would violate their rights because there is a risk they would receive a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole if convicted in the US. Interim measures have been granted by the ECHR to prevent their extradition pending a determination. The Scottish Legal Aid Board said: 'Extradition cases can result in higher costs because of their international nature but we work with legal teams to ensure these are managed effectively.' The last ECHR update said it was being 'communicated to the Government for observations' in July 2023. The US Attorney's Office, in the Western District of Virginia, said it does not comment on pending extradition matters. The Scottish Government said it would be 'inappropriate' to comment.
Daily Mail
15 hours ago
- Daily Mail
FBI issues warning about 'elevated threat' to Jewish communities
Security officials have issued an urgent warning about the 'elevated threat' to Jewish communities nationwide following two recent antisemitic attacks. The Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released the public service announcement , warning people to stay vigilant as the ongoing violence in Gaza may 'motivate' further attacks. Officials cited two recent threats at the basis for the warning: the May shooting at the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington DC , and the recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado. 'The ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict may motivate other violent extremists and hate crime perpetrators with similar grievances to conduct violence against Jewish and Israeli communities and their supporters,' the release stated. 'Foreign terrorist organizations also may try to exploit narratives related to the conflict to inspire attacks in the United States. 'The FBI and DHS therefore urge the public to remain vigilant and to report any threats of violence or suspicious activity to law enforcement .' The warning comes after 12 people were injured in Boulder during a vigil for the Jewish hostages still held captive by Hamas in Gaza. The group was carrying out a weekly silent walk in solidarity with the hostages as it has done ever since the October 7 attack. But the peaceful protest quickly descended into chaos when 45-year-old Mohamed Soliman allegedly launched a violent attack on a group of about 30 demonstrators, using a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to set eight victims on fire. The attack left twelve people injured, among them an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor . Soliman's wife and five children were taken into custody by agents with ICE and Homeland Security just two days later. Soliman arrived in the United States from Egypt in August 2022, but overstayed his initial tourist visa and was ultimately handed a two-year work permit by the Biden administration, which he also overstayed, as reported by Fox News . The family was expected to be processed for expedited removal, which would allow authorities to rapidly deport them without a hearing in an immigration court. Authorities said they found 16 unused Molotov cocktails when they arrested Soliman, adding that he only threw two of the devices because 'he was scared and had never hurt anyone before'. Agents also recovered a journal from Soliman's home in which he detailed his plans for the attack, and said he wanted to 'kill all Zionists', according to an affidavit on his arrest. The document also revealed that Soliman plotted the firebombing for over a year, but waited until after his daughter's graduation to conduct the attack. He is now facing 16 counts of attempted murder and federal hate crime charges. The Colorado attack came just over a week after a man was arrested over the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC , on May 22. The victims were identified as German-Israeli dual national Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and his girlfriend Sarah Milgrim, 26. The suspect, identified as 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez , repeatedly shouted 'Free Palestine' after shooting them dead - all while police dragged him away. The couple, who were set to get engaged just a week from their deaths, had attended a Young Diplomats event before they were shot that night. In the moments before the deadly shooting, Rodriguez was reportedly seen pacing back and forth before allegedly opening fire on a group of four people standing outside the museum. Jewish human rights organization the Simon Wiesenthal Center told Daily Mail the Boulder attack came on the first day of a religious holiday. He blamed the attack, as well as the murders of the Israeli embassy staffers, on 'months of anti-Israel propaganda, moral equivocation, and silence in the face of raging antisemitism'. 'The nonstop demonization of Israel and Zionism on our campuses, in our streets, and across digital platforms has created a climate where hate flourishes, and physical attacks—even murder—of Jews is inevitable ,' Berk said. Rodriguez had reportedly entered the building and was offered both water and comfort by attendees, who assumed he was a victim of the shooting. According to a witness, after spending about 15 minutes inside the museum in an apparent state of shock, he asked someone to call police and confessed. He was then taken into custody. Rodriguez was charged in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia with the murder of foreign officials, causing death through the use of a firearm, and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, according to the United States Attorney's Office . He is also charged with two counts of first-degree murder under the DC criminal code.
