Is the U.S. really ‘inflating’ Ryan Wedding’s image as drug kingpin?
CBC News separates fact from speculation after a Mexican cartel enforcer questions Wedding's role
If it were the premise of a Hollywood movie, it would be hard to believe.
A young Olympic snowboarder from Canada throws away a promising future by turning to a life of crime, only to become one of the world’s most-wanted men — all while amassing vast wealth and leaving behind a trail of bodies.
Could it all be true?
In an interview with CBC News, an operative for Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa cartel has sought to poke holes in the story of fugitive Ryan Wedding — that is, in the version told by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice.
The unnamed cartel enforcer said the U.S. is “inflating” Wedding’s role “to put all the attention on him,” and to claim victory if the Thunder Bay, Ont., native is captured. He also dismissed the FBI’s allegation that the Canadian is being protected by the Sinaloa cartel.
Indeed, there’s likely an element of political theatre involved in the high-profile manhunt. But many facts of the case have been established in court.
The following analysis is based on a reporter’s review over the past year of hundreds of pages of court filings, multiple hours of court hearings, public statements by prosecutors and investigators, and interviews with current and former officials familiar with the case.
Protected by the Sinaloa cartel?
First of all, the FBI has provided no evidence to back up its repeated claim that Wedding is being protected by the Sinaloa cartel — a violent drug-trafficking syndicate in the midst of its own bloody infighting.
The U.S. federal agency first made the protection allegation in the fall of 2024. By then, a civil war had broken out between the cartel’s two main factions: Los Chapitos, named after the sons of notorious drug lord Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzmán, and the group loyal to Ismael (El Mayo) Zambada, another co-founder of the cartel.
Investigators have declined to say with which branch Wedding may be aligned.
In an interview earlier this year, a former senior official with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) told CBC it would be unthinkable for the Sinaloa cartel to be protecting Wedding under the current circumstances.
“That’s absurd,” said Mike Vigil, who served as the DEA’s chief of international operations. “The cartel right now is in conflict,” he said.
Still, there may be more to the story.
The RCMP recently declined to comment on a 2019 National Post article, which reported the Mounties suspect Wedding has ties to the cartel "via a spouse."
The ‘man in charge’ for more than a decade
In terms of Wedding’s own purported drug-trafficking network, it was the RCMP, not U.S. authorities, who first raised concerns a decade ago.
Wedding had already served prison time in the U.S. after he was convicted in 2009 over a plot to smuggle cocaine from California to B.C. on behalf of a Vancouver-based criminal organization.
Amid Operation Harrington — a large-scale investigation into cartel-linked cocaine imports to Canada in the mid 2010s — the RCMP was told Wedding was the “man in charge” of the transnational conspiracy.
It was one of Wedding’s co-accused, Philipos Kollaros who’d made the claim to an undercover officer, according to court files. Kollaros was ultimately gunned down in Montreal’s Little Italy after pleading guilty to conspiracy charges.
His still-unsolved murder fit in a pattern: former associates of Wedding had a way of turning up dead.
Earlier this year, longtime drug trafficker turned FBI informant, Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia was shot in the head five times in a Medellin, Colombia, restaurant. His death came 13 months after Acebedo-Garcia agreed to help investigators bring down Wedding’s drug-trafficking empire.
This year, U.S. federal prosecutors presented enough evidence for a grand jury in California to indict Wedding and more than a dozen associates on charges related to Acebedo-Garcia’s murder.
Evidence recently filed in an Ontario court — including encrypted communications — also appeared damning to the judge who’s considering whether to release one of Wedding’s alleged accomplices on bail.
“The most important aspects of the case are certainly irrefutable,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Peter Bawden said at a hearing last week.
‘Modern day’ El Chapo?
Here’s where it gets complicated.
Last month, FBI director Kash Patel compared Wedding to two of the most infamous drug lords in recent memory: Guzmán and the late Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.
“Make no mistake,” Patel told reporters. “Ryan Wedding is a modern-day iteration” of Escobar and Guzmán. “He is responsible for engineering a narco-trafficking and narco-terrorism program that we have not seen in a long time.”
As Mexico-based crime journalist Ioan Grillo recently pointed out, the violence attributed to Wedding may be egregious — dozens of murders, including the mistaken-identity shooting of an Indian couple in Caledon, Ont. — but it doesn’t amount to the reigns of terror linked to Escobar and El Chapo.
Between them, the two men are believed to be responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.
The amount of drugs that Wedding’s network routinely smuggles across North America is also impossible to independently assess.
The most precise figures yet came from police in Los Angeles, the city Wedding’s network is said to use as a hub for drug shipments.
“An estimated 60 metric tonnes of cocaine per year and five metric tonnes of fentanyl per month moved through Los Angeles on its way to U.S. and Canadian cities,” LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said last March.
Some smuggling operations have been admitted to.
Two truckers linked to Wedding pleaded guilty following their August 2024 arrest near the Blue Water Bridge linking Michigan to Ontario while carrying 95 kilograms of cocaine bricks and 20 kilograms of heroin.
Wedding’s alleged second-in-command, Andrew Clark, is said to have boasted about moving two to three tonnes of cocaine to Canada per month, including 600 kilograms to Alberta.
Clark and several other co-defendants indicted as part of the FBI’s Operation Giant Slalom targeting Wedding’s network are set to go on trial in L.A. in February. Clark has pleaded not guilty to murder and conspiracy charges.
Prosecutors had hoped their lead defendant — Wedding — would be among those standing trial. The 44-year-old remains on the lam, with the U.S. offering a $15-million bounty for information leading to his arrest.
“Wedding is very wealthy and may be in a position to gain assistance from influential people or groups,” FBI spokesperson Laura Eimiller told CBC. “This is one reason why the reward offer is so substantial.”
CBC News senior reporter Thomas Daigle has extensively covered the search for Ryan Wedding. He can be reached by email at thomas.daigle@cbc.ca.
With files from Jorge Barrera & Tania Miranda Perez