The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has provided a reward of as much as $10 million for the seize of former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding ceremony, who’s been accused of drug- and homicide-related crimes.
Wedding ceremony grew to become identified to the cryptosphere because of the allegations that he and his co-conspirators used Tether (USDT) for drug gross sales, to keep away from conventional banking programs, and to launder cash.
The 43-year-old Canadian nationwide has now been added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wished Fugitives checklist, the FBI’s announcement mentioned.
Moreover, the $10 million reward dietary supplements the FBI’s current providing of $50,000 for data resulting in Wedding ceremony’s arrest. This reward is collectively provided with help from the Canadian and Mexican governments.
The #FBI has named Ryan James Wedding ceremony to its Ten Most Wished Fugitives Listing. Wedding ceremony is needed for his alleged involvement in a large-scale transnational drug trafficking operation and orchestrating a number of murders linked to his prison enterprise: https://t.co/VD2Z9BLu5F pic.twitter.com/jV1796iMGu
— FBI (@FBI) March 6, 2025
In the meantime, Wedding ceremony competed within the Large Slalom snowboarding competitors throughout the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah, USA. Nevertheless, within the years after that, he adopted aliases akin to ‘El Jefe,’ ‘Large,’ ‘Public Enemy,’ ‘James Conrad King,’ and ‘Jesse King,’ allegedly committing a variety of critical crimes.
The authorities declare he has been working a transnational drug trafficking community that shipped a whole lot of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, by way of Mexico and Southern California, to Canada and the US.
Moreover, they mentioned he orchestrated a number of murders and an tried homicide.
“Wedding ceremony went from shredding powder on the slopes on the Olympics to distributing powder cocaine on the streets of U.S. cities and in his native Canada,” mentioned Akil Davis, the Assistant Director of the FBI’s Los Angeles Area Workplace.
Mexican authorities arrested Wedding ceremony’s second-in-command, 34-year-old Canadian Andrew Clark, final October. Clark was among the many 29 fugitives that arrived within the US from Mexico final week, the FBI mentioned.
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In June 2024, the US authorities charged Wedding ceremony, Clark, and several other different individuals with the above-noted crimes.
The doc by the USA District Court docket for the Central District of California gives additional perception into the group’s operations, alleging that defendants and others would use USDT to pay Wedding ceremony and Clark for medicine.
In accordance with the doc, “on June 18, 2024, by way of [the encrypted messaging application] Threema, defendant [Nahim Jorge Bonilla] despatched the [confidential source] a screenshot exhibiting that he had paid 17,300 USDT into the tether pockets account that [a co-conspirator] had despatched the QR code for.”
Wedding ceremony is presently on the run, probably hiding in Mexico underneath the safety of the infamous Sinaloa cartel.
Notably, Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, together with Sinaloa, more and more relied on cryptocurrencies, particularly USDT, to facilitate their illicit operations, the US Federal authorities claimed in November 2024.
A confidential supply mentioned on the time that USDT is on the market in Mexico at a reduced price due to its hyperlinks to drug proceeds. Mexican-based teams promote USDT at a lower cost than its market worth, figuring out that its affiliation with prison exercise taints it.
Then, these identical USDT tokens are offered at increased costs in international locations like Colombia.
Moreover, court docket paperwork argued that drug traffickers adopted crypto to bypass conventional monetary programs and set up a extra environment friendly strategy to switch wealth.
Subsequently, USDT has change into a well-liked automobile for laundering cash throughout borders, the US Federal authorities argued.
A Tether spokesperson mentioned that transactions associated to prison actions sometimes happen on the secondary market and will not be instantly sourced from Tether’s approved channels.
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