Snow Bros: Inside the FBI's Ten Million Dollar Manhunt

Yahoo

03-04-2025

Ryan Wedding should be a hard man to hide. The one-time Olympian stands at a muscular six-foot-three and carries himself with the secure swagger that comes with being a white man of privilege. He was raised in the Canadian ski resort town of Thunder Bay, the son of wealthy and multilingual Canadian parents, both star skiers, who poured their hearts and savings into their young athletic offspring's snowboarding dreams. Their expensive and rapt attention paid off. In 2002, the accomplished shredder represented Team Canada in the men's Parallel Giant Slalom race in Park City, Utah. Unfortunately, there was no metal behind that mettle. He placed in the heat at a solidly unremarkable 24th place.
These days the 43-year-old rich kid's profile is much higher than even those seeking Olympic gold, and his once clean-cut looks are far more bad-boy menacing. Last month, Wedding's photo — arms inked with tribal sleeve tattoos, unruly ginger hair tucked under an L.A. baseball cap the same royal blue color as his penetrating eyes — was added to the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted List. The crimes he stands accused of are eerily similar to the case presented against Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán, the notorious drug lord who commanded over the bloodthirsty Sinaloa cartel for decades until he was captured in 2016 and sentenced to life in prison in the world's most secure prison three years later. The Sinaloa cartel, which has gone through a slew of management shifts after Guzmán's conviction that led to warring within the region marked by unimaginable violence as several factions jockey for top positions, the DEA says, just so happens to be the same Mexican criminal outfit that federal prosecutors believe is harboring Ryan Wedding despite a $10 million U.S. Department of State bounty that is being offered for any information leading to his capture. The international manhunt for Ryan Wedding has Drug Enforcement Agency insiders buzzing, according to several sources who spoke to Los Angeles on the condition of anonymity, that El Chapo's notoriously deadly empire, and the routes the Sinaloa cartel built from Colombia into Mexico with stash houses in L.A., have been taken over by Wedding, a white boy Canadian yuppie from a family of intellects.
Despite his pedigreed background, Wedding enjoys a terrifying assortment of monikers and aliases whispered by his criminal compatriots as he enjoys his life on the run. Among them: 'El Jefe,' the Boss, and 'El Toro,' the Bull, along with 'Public Enemy,' 'Buddy,' 'Grande,' 'Mexi' and 'the Giant,' all nicknames now listed on a federal indictment unsealed last fall in California's Central District where prosecutors build cases against accused transnational drug lords like Wedding in an imposing Little Tokyo highrise that houses L.A.'s federal court. Wedding's operation, federal law enforcement officials in the United States say, mirrored the Sinaloa cartel's stronghold on critical transportation routes. Like El Chapo, the former Olympian 'headed a complex transnational organized crime organization which coordinated the procurement and transportation of cocaine from South America to Canada,' according to the Department of Justice. In Los Angeles, Wedding used stash houses to hide bulk quantities of cocaine 'weighing hundreds of kilograms,' investigators say, before the drugs were trafficked from Southern California to Canada. All of it stealing a page from the playbook of El Chapo and his criminal compatriots.L.A. is also the city where El Chapo's wife, former beauty queen Emma Coronel Aispuro, who married the decades-older Guzmán on her 18th birthday, remains on federal parole after finishing a three-year sentence on charges she helped her husband maintain control of his trafficking empire. These days it appears that she is eschewing her cartel roots for couture with the launch of a shapewear line that will rival Skims, the underwear brand run by Kim Kardashian, as she continues to check in with her California federal parole officer.
Whether Wedding has officially taken a top spot in the Sinaloa cartel is unclear. But it's worth noting that the $10 million reward being offered by the U.S. Department of State for the brawny athlete is double the bounty American officials put up for El Chapo's capture during his unimaginably violent heyday.
How It Started, Where It's Going
How Wedding became what the feds call 'an Olympic-athlete-turned-drug lord,' comprises a blood-soaked trail that spans decades and stretches across several continents and connects him to some of the most dangerous criminals in the world: dirty ex-Russian KGB agents, Iranian encryption experts, Hezbollah-connected narco terrorists and an ex-wife whose name came up in a money laundering scheme involving hawala, the Iranian money transfer system that has come under scrutiny because of its lack of a paper trail. According to prosecutors, Wedding's operation brought in about a $1 billion a year and was run with an unlikely and motley coterie of crooks. Among them: Nahim Jorge Bonilla, a Latin music executive whose preferred nickname was 'The One' and whom investigators believe was negotiating drug deals as owner of the Miami Beach hot spot Mandrake. There was an Indian trucking magnate; a Toronto hitman; Russian mobsters; and Wedding's childhood buddy Andrew Clark, his second-in-command, better known by his alias 'The Dictator.' But Wedding, 'El Jefe,' was undeniably the boss. Prosecutors say he moved 60 tons of cocaine a year from the humid climes of South and Central America to the iciest reaches of Canada, and was the 'principal administrator, organizer and leader of the criminal enterprise.' Los Angeles was Wedding's hub, the proverbial ground zero for his operation's sophisticated 'transportation network' that stockpiled drugs in warehouses across the city before they were smuggled into Canada by long-haul truckers. Wedding's last year on the Canadian Olympic team came in 2002. It was around this time that, per Matthew Allen, the Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's L.A. field division, Wedding pivoted from 'navigating slopes' to 'contouring a life of incessant crimes.' The crimes Wedding committed, he says, were 'unremitting, callous and greed-driven.' In another nod to El Chapo's violent reign, Wedding also used violence to eliminate the competition with the use of contract killers he and his consiglierie Clark kept on speed dial, according to the DOJ.
Their alleged victims include Mohammed Zafar, 39, a resident of Brampton, located about an hour outside Toronto, who was ordered murdered over a drug debt on May 18, 2024. In December 2023, Wedding and Clark, according to a federal indictment, ordered the execution-style murders of Jagtar and Harbhajan Sidhu, a married Indian couple in their 50s visiting their daughter in Caledon, Ontario. The couple had rented a house once belonging to an Indian drug courier who left L.A. with a large shipment of drugs that never made it to their destination. In what officials called 'a case of mistaken identity,' the assassin erroneously assumed he had found his target and opened fire. During said execution, the hired hitman also shot the couple's daughter, Jaspreet Kaur Sidhu, 13 times. She miraculously survived, recalling her harrowing experience with CBC news: 'I heard my mother's last screams. After that, there was complete silence. Only the noises of gunshots.'Investigators have been on Wedding's tail since 2015, when the disgraced Olympian's name was listed in court documents filed in Montreal as part of a drug case spearheaded by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Wedding was charged with two counts of conspiracy to import cocaine, two counts of conspiracy to traffic cocaine and one count of trafficking cocaine. Wedding fled Canada and, in turn, the U.S. Department of Justice authorities dubbed the case to bring. the narcotics trafficker to justice 'Operation Giant Slalom,' a nod to the Olympic race in which Wedding competed in Salt Lake City. In October, the feds struck hard at Wedding's network, rounding up his most powerful lieutenants in a series of raids in the United States, Colombia and Mexico. Heavily armed FBI Agents swarmed Bonilla's $5 million Miami mansion, once owned by DJ Khaled, demanding the music mogul-cum-restaurateur surrender over an implicating loudspeaker. In the Pacific-bordering state of Jalisco, Clark was tackled in a dramatic maneuver coordinated by Mexico's Navy Seals and was extradited back to the U.S. last month along with dozens of other high-profile accused drug lords. In total, authorities seized roughly a ton of cocaine, firearms and dozens of rounds of ammunition; more than $255,000 in cold hard cash; and over $3.2 million in cryptocurrency.
But Wedding has mastered the art of evading law enforcement. The ruthless ringleader remains at large living in the lap of luxury at the expense of those whose lives he destroyed.
California Dreamin'
Wedding's dizzying life of crime began in California in the summer of 2008. That June, a review of court records show, he flew to LAX with an Iranian money launderer named Hassan Sharari and Michael Krapchan, a reputed Russian mobster with plans to buy 24 kilos of cocaine from former KGB agent Yuri Trofinov. But nothing on that trip for the ex-Olympian would go as planned.In a recorded phone call, Trofinov assured Krapchan, the owner of a Vancouver radio station and Vice President of the Vancouver Russian Jews Association, that the cocaine was '100% Colombian' and available for pickup in Los Angeles. Krapchan was afraid of Trofinov, and for good reason: Trofinov was a former member of the KGB, the now-defunct phalanx of secret police whose tactics were so terrifying most Russians refused to utter the acronym aloud. Rather, its agents were referred to by the euphemism, 'high-class professionals.' Krapchan's attorney would later describe Trofinov in a court filing as 'a big player' in the drug trade, 'a Godfather' in a ring of former KGB agents and Russian policemen involved in global-wide drug dealing and money laundering activities. Krapchan owed Trofinov money connected to a real estate deal gone wrong. If the debt wasn't paid, the 'high-class professional' warned that he would 'take care of [Krapchan] the Russian way.'The cocaine deal would provide Krapchan a way out. Trofinov would sell him 24 kilos of that 'Colombian' coke, which, in turn, Krapchan could upsell and wipe out his remaining debt. Krapchan accepted the deal, noting that he would be traveling to L.A. with 'a Canadian athlete' (Wedding) and 'an Iranian' (Sharari).When Wedding and Sharari touched down at LAX, Trofinov was waiting at the airport. He immediately demanded to see the money. But Wedding said they didn't have it. 'Obviously, I didn't put it in my fucking suitcase,' he told Trofinov. The terms had changed, he explained. He would buy one kilo, he said, 'have a look at it, and grab the rest of them later.'
Trofinov erupted into a fiery rage. No one knew it then, but the ex-KGB officer was wired up, working undercover for the FBI. The feds were positioned nearby with a plan to swoop in and grab the trio right there. Only Wedding's 'paper' to pay for the drugs had been sent to L.A. using the ancient Iranian money transferring system known as hawala, which kept transactions such as this one from the prying eyes of banking authorities and regulatory agencies so that there was no arrestable transaction. They needed a day or two to access the cash.The men went their separate ways. Wedding checked into a room at the Comfort Inn in Woodland Hills and chilled until the buy scheduled for three days later in San Diego at a dumpy hotel room, where the FBI was waiting. The would-be drug buyers were bundled into handcuffs as agents searched Wedding's hotel room in the valley where they recovered 100 grand in a dresser. In a matter of days, the Iranian flipped, testifying against Wedding who was found guilty at trial.When it came time for his sentencing in May 2010, Wedding turned on the charm for the judge who would determine his fate, apologizing for 'the stupid and irresponsible decisions,' that led to him 'coming down to San Diego to buy drugs.' Worse, he added, 'I allowed myself to be lured by the idea of easy money, and the sad thing is I really didn't need money that bad. As an athlete, I was always taught that there are no second chances, and, well, I'm here asking for exactly that.' The judge was moved, so much so she told Wedding he had swayed her into imposing a lighter sentence than the one she had in mind. Wedding was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison. With time served after his arrest, he was released months later in 2011. He used his time wisely, a DEA official told Los Angeles on the condition of anonymity. 'He was in jail with Mexican Mafia right at the time they had made a deal with El Chapo years earlier to protect his drug routes. His time in a federal lockup was a dream for an aspiring narco terrorist. It was like getting a graduate degree in cartel ops.'
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