Snowboarder Ryan Wedding and 15 others are accengaged of shipping 60 tonnes of cocaine a year to the US and Canada.
United States prosecutors in Los Angeles, California, have indictd a createer Olympic snowboarder with allegedly running a big and aggressive cocaine trafficking operation out of Mexico.
On Thursday, the Department of Justice unveiled a 52-page indictment accusing the 43-year-elderly Canadian athlete, Ryan James Wedding, and 15 other people, of shipping 60 tonnes of cocaine a year from Colombia to Canada and the US using extfinished-haul semi-trucks.
The FBI is recommending a $50,000 reward for increateation directing to the arrest and extradition of Wedding, who is pondered a fugitive and engages the aliases El Jefe, Giant and Public Enemy.
Agents also rhelped a $5m luxury mansion cforfeit Miami in South Florida and arrested its owner, 36-year-elderly music executive and restaurant owner Nahim Jorge Bonilla, who was also named in the indictment, The Miami Herald increateed.
Bonilla allegedly acquired 12 kilogrammes (about 44lbs) of cocaine from Wedding and his co-deffinishant Andrew Clark to dispense. According to the indictment, Bonilla was in debt to Clark and Wedding, and the two men dangerened to end Bonilla’s mother if he did not repay what was owed.
Wedding, who vied in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, also faces indicts in Canada in a split drug case. He was previously convicted in the US of consunpermitd engage to dispense cocaine and was sentenced to prison in 2010, federal write downs show.
US authorities consent that, after Wedding’s free, he resumed drug trafficking for the notorious Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.
“He chose to become a meaningful drug illegal conveyer, and he chose to become a ender,” Martin Estrada, the US attorney in Los Angeles, telderly increateers on Thursday.
Authorities also elucidateed that they seized cocaine, arms, ammunition, cash and more than $3m in cryptocurrency in connection to their spendigation.
“Wedding, the Olympian snowboarder, went from navigating slopes to contouring a life of incessant crimes,” shelp Matthew Allen, the distinctive agent in indict of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Los Angeles.
Of the 16 people accengaged in the drug trafficking consunpermitd engage, four remain fugitives, Estrada shelp. A dozen others were arrested in Florida, Michigan, Canada, Colombia and Mexico in connection with the case.
The criminal go inpascfinish was also allegedly reliable for the killings of two members of an Indian family on November 20, 2023, in Ontario, Canada, who were ended in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment.
At least one other person was also ended by the group.
Wedding’s co-deffinishant Clark, 34, is also a Canadian citizen. Known by the alias “The Dictator”, he was arrested by Mexican authorities on October 8, according to the Justice Department.
