Fugitive Ryan Wedding's ex-wife named in money laundering, kidnapping probes
Former Olympic snowboarder married B.C. woman while in prison for cocaine-trafficking conspiracy
It would be a Valentine's Day to remember.
Nine years to the day after Canadian snowboarder Ryan Wedding flew down the slalom course at the Olympic Games in Utah, he was about to get married.
But this was no ordinary celebration.
At age 29, Wedding was already a convicted drug trafficker, serving his sentence at a mega-prison in Texas. On Feb. 14, 2011 — while still incarcerated — he said "I do" with a B.C. businesswoman whose name would later surface at a trial for a violent kidnapping and extortion in Vancouver.
The relationships Wedding had been forging in prison would place him at the crossroads of Mexican drug cartels and Iranian-linked money laundering networks. Those connections appear to have acted as springboards for his rise in the criminal underworld.
Now listed as one of the FBI's most-wanted fugitives, the Thunder Bay, Ont., native is accused of running his own murderous drug-smuggling ring with ties to the notorious Sinaloa cartel. And while former associates and perceived rivals have turned up dead, Wedding's whereabouts remain unknown.
Using public records including U.S. and Canadian court documents, a CBC News investigation has pieced together some key elements in Wedding's transformation from an Olympian to an alleged drug kingpin with nicknames like "Giant" and "Public Enemy." Parts of his story have never been reported before.
Wedding's wedding
He didn't come off as the type looking for a commitment of the romantic kind.
As Wedding stood trial in California in 2009 for a cocaine-trafficking conspiracy, an FBI investigator couldn't help but notice the six-foot, three-inch, 240-pound former athlete had "girlfriends" coming and going.
But what also struck Brett Kalina, a now-retired supervisory special agent, were Wedding's plans for the future. Kalina had arrested Wedding outside a Hampton Inn, in a sting operation after he had flown from Vancouver to Los Angeles to buy 24 kilograms of cocaine. And the contacts Wedding then made at San Diego's Metropolitan Correctional Center only served to embolden him, Kalina said.
The FBI monitored Wedding's calls behind bars and "he regularly made comments like 'I'm meeting people, I'm learning,' " Kalina told CBC News. "We knew what he meant."
"And he did meet the right people."
Two years later, Wedding married an Iranian-born woman while incarcerated at Reeves County Detention Center in west Texas, according to U.S. prison records and a copy of the marriage licence.
In a telephone interview, the woman said Wedding told her his conviction was only because he'd been "at the wrong place at the wrong time." She says they haven't spoken in recent years and that she's since remarried.
"I don't want to be associated with these people," she said.
CBC News is not naming the woman as she is not charged with a crime. Her name, however, has appeared in at least two Canadian police investigations tied to drugs and kidnapping. She denies wrongdoing.
The latter case saw reputed drug trafficker Sulaiman Safi kidnapped from a Vancouver restaurant in October 2011 and held at gunpoint over missing cash. A B.C. court heard Safi had agreed to a money laundering scheme directed by a woman whose unnamed clients needed to move "roughly $2 million per week" into the U.S.
After $400,000 of that cash disappeared, Safi was ordered to meet the woman's associates at the Denman Tap House overlooking English Bay. Cell phone records suggest Wedding's wife was listening in for 15 minutes.
"It had zero to do with me," the woman insisted. She says a friend who was at the meeting had called her earlier and hadn't hung up.
Two men led Safi to a loading dock, where he was blindfolded, handcuffed and whisked away in a black SUV. With a Glock pressed to his forehead, Safi was told "these guys want their money now or you are going to die today," he later testified.
Undercover officer infiltrates crime ring
By February 2014, Wedding had been out of U.S. custody for more than two years and was — at least on paper — broke. He filed for bankruptcy and said in a sworn statement he was unemployed.
While B.C. bankruptcy records show Wedding was leasing a new Ford F-350 pickup truck and living with his wife in a gated condo complex in Coquitlam, he declared neither of them had any income. Publicly, he was only receiving "financial support from family members."
"I, due to being in prison for several years, unable to work and contribute to the household, was unable to fulfil my financial obligations as they became due," Wedding wrote.
But that wasn't the whole story.
According to the RCMP's Operation Harrington — a two-year probe into cartel-linked cocaine imports to Canada — Wedding was, by around then, moving up in Montreal's underworld. All of it came to light in April 2015 when the Mounties announced charges against him and more than a dozen others, including drug trafficker Philipos Kollaros.
An undercover officer, identified in court only as "Joe" had infiltrated their crime ring by posing as a drug importer with access to smuggling ships.
Kollaros introduced Wedding to Joe as the "man in charge" and, in turn, Wedding openly described himself as a cocaine importer. They discussed in detail a plan to smuggle $25 million worth of cocaine using Joe's boat, through the Caribbean and onto Newfoundland. The cocaine would then be loaded onto trucks bound for Montreal.
"They are not small fry," Quebec Court Judge Yves Paradis said of the criminal network. "The evidence shows that this business is part of their lifestyle. They are involved in the drug trade at a high level."
And eventually, it caught up with them.
Kollaros was gunned down in Montreal's Little Italy, months after pleading guilty to the conspiracy. Another target of the probe, Jahanbakhsh Meshkati, was shot dead in Burnaby, B.C., before charges could be laid. Both killings remain unsolved.
As for Wedding, the Mounties had a warrant for his arrest on charges of trafficking and conspiracy to import cocaine — but he was already gone. Now 43, he's been on the run ever since.
Last year, Wedding and another 15 alleged accomplices were indicted by a federal grand jury in California after a cross-border investigation dubbed Operation Giant Slalom, as a nod to Wedding's previous career. The RCMP said the group was responsible for "commissioning murders across North America, and laundering significant proceeds of crime."
Wedding and his top lieutenant, fellow Canadian Andrew Clark, are accused of orchestrating at least four "execution-style" killings in Ontario including the mistaken-identity shootings of an Indian couple in November 2023.
Hezbollah, Mexican cartel nexus
It was around the time of Operation Harrington, that Wedding's ties to Iranian-linked money laundering networks and to the infamous Sinaloa cartel were coming into focus.
Prior to his first trafficking arrest, Wedding had used the "cultural" money-laundering network of an Iranian-Canadian co-defendant to move $100,000 for the purchase, according to evidence at trial.
Operation Harrington later uncovered drug smuggling routes involving Venezuela's Margarita Island, long considered a training hub for the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.
Last year, DEA intelligence chief Carrie Thompson even warned Congress about a "clear connection between the drug trade and the financing of terrorist organizations and rogue state actors, including the Iranian regime."
Harrington also revealed that Iranian criminal networks — which included Meshkati, the Wedding associate who was killed in Burnaby — were involved in "massive cartel operations."
Meshkati was also known for his "encrypted Blackberry businesses," according to a report last year co-written by former U.S. State Dept. official David Luna. Indeed, encrypted Blackberry chats proved a throughline in multiple investigations, including the case involving Wedding's wife and Safi, the kidnapping victim.
U.S. prosecutors have linked Wedding to Mexico's Sinaloa cartel which, under then-leader Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzmán, made inroads in B.C.
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Andrew Hogan wrote in his book Hunting El Chapo that he'd been "caught off guard by [Guzmán's] deep infiltration of Canada." (The group was recently designated as terrorists by the Canadian and U.S. governments.)
What's more, Hogan wrote, "Chapo's men had connections with sophisticated Iranian organized-crime gangs in Canada."
Years later, U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada told reporters the "Wedding criminal enterprise … was connected to cartels, specifically the Sinaloa cartel, which offered them protection in Mexico to carry out their operations."
Estrada told CBC Wedding could be hiding out anywhere in the country, or elsewhere in Latin America.
The National Post reported in 2019 that the RCMP believe Wedding has ties to the cartel "via a spouse."
Ex-wife named in police probe
As for Wedding's ex-wife, her name again surfaced in a 2020 Calgary police investigation of illicit cannabis sales online. Officers searched two properties in B.C. and seized nearly 18,000 pot plants.
According to a claim filed in court by B.C.'s director of civil forfeiture, $109,000 of "unlawful proceeds" from the cannabis operation was used to pay down a mortgage linked to Wedding's ex-wife. Court documents show she and the other defendants are suspected of money laundering and using proceeds of crime to buy the properties.
"It was resolved," the woman told CBC News. "It wasn't even anything to do with money laundering."
Records show two civil cases were closed without the now 45-year-old woman admitting wrongdoing. She and two firms linked to her handed over $97,500 to the province's Civil Forfeiture Office (CFO) in connection with one address in Abbotsford, B.C. Another property in Vancouver was sold, with more than $470,000 forfeited in court.
A third civil matter is still pending, according to a spokesperson for the B.C. Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General.
The RCMP declined an interview request. A spokesperson said in a statement "efforts to seek the arrest of Ryan Wedding remain underway." The FBI is offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to his arrest and extradition.
If you have a news tip related to this story, contact CBC News senior reporter Thomas Daigle by email: [email protected].
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