Today, the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs is announcing a reward offer increase under the Narcotics Rewards Program (NRP) of up to $15 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction, in any country, of Canadian narcotics trafficker Ryan James Wedding. This reward, which has been increased from up to $10 million, is offered in coordination with the FBI and the governments of Canada and Mexico in a unified effort to bring Wedding to justice.
The Department is also announcing reward offers of up to $2 million each for information leading to the arrests and/or convictions of multiple unknown assassins responsible for the January 2025 murder of an associate of Wedding in Medellín, Colombia.
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, Utah. After his snowboarding career, Wedding turned to a life of crime as a transnational narcotics trafficker. He was last known to be residing in Mexico.
According to the indictments, from January 2024 to August 2024, Wedding and others allegedly conspired 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 also allegedly committed violence and murder to achieve its aims. This includes the November 2023 murder of two members of a family in Ontario, Canada, in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment that passed through Southern California, as well as the May 2024 murder of another victim in Niagara Falls, Ontario, over a drug debt. Wedding and several co-conspirators were also indicted for their roles in the January 2025 murder of a U.S. federal witness against Wedding in Colombia.
Today's announcements complement the Department of Justice's announcement of the unsealing of an indictment against Wedding and the unknown assassins, as well as the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control's (OFAC) announcement of sanctions against Wedding, several of his associates, and related entities.
Today's reward offers are authorized by the Secretary under the NRP
