Ryan Wedding, who represented Canada in snowboarding at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, is now a fugitive from the U.S. justice system, accused of running a violent international drug trafficking ring. Wedding allegedly orchestrated the shipment of tons of cocaine from Colombia to Mexico, the United States and Canada – and he is accused of ordering several murders.

The FBI says Wedding, 43, is a fugitive and may be in Mexico. A federal arrest warrant was issued for him a month ago in the U.S. Central District Court in Los Angeles. He works with the notorious Sinaloa Cartel, the U.S. Attorney’s Office told NPR.

A grand jury indictment was first filed in June, charging Wedding with numerous crimes. He is the main defendant in a new indictment that was made public this week and names 16 people in total.

“They unleashed an avalanche of violent crime, including brutal murders,” Matthew Allen, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Los Angeles division, said in a statement. “Wedding, the Olympian snowboarder, went from navigating the slopes to building a life of incessant crime.”

Ryan Wedding appears on an FBI wanted poster. The United States says Wedding, 43, is a fugitive and may be in Mexico.

Authorities say the drug conspiracy unfolded on a massive scale, listing locations from Colombia and Mexico to three California counties – Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino – and Miami-Dade County, in Florida.

Agents were able to monitor the group’s actions earlier this year, thanks to a mole who relayed coded messages about suspected drug shipments sent on the encrypted messaging app Threema, according to the indictment.

The indictment describes a complex scheme in which Canadian-based transportation dispatchers allegedly used dollar bill serial numbers as “tokens” to verify the identities of co-conspirators as they so tractor-trailers transport tons of cocaine from southern California to Canada. The alleged leaders of the company’s transportation arm agreed to a lump sum of $220,000 Canadian for each load, according to court documents.

As part of the federal investigation – dubbed Operation Giant Slalom, echoing an Olympic event in which Wedding participated – law enforcement officers arrested the defendants with a total of about 1,800 kilograms (1.8 tons) of cocaine, according to the Department of Justice. They also seized weapons, $255,400 in cash and more than $3.2 million in cryptocurrency.

This week, the scope of Operation Giant Slalom expanded to an elite enclave in Aventura, Florida. The FBI raided a millions-dollar mansion that a defendant, Miami Beach music executive and restaurateur Nahim Jorge Bonilla, allegedly purchased from music star DJ Khaled.

According to the indictment, Wedding sent Bonilla 12 kilograms of cocaine – 7 paid for and 5 on consignment. In June, Wedding threatened to kill Bonilla’s mother if the remaining debt was not paid within three days, according to court documents. Within a week, Bonilla allegedly paid Wedding 2 kilograms of cocaine and sent 20 kilograms of methamphetamine to Montreal, Canada, to settle the remainder of the debt.

Stacks of cocaine are visible in a Justice Department image from Aug. 1, when some 201 kilograms of cocaine were seized in Riverside County, California, as part of an investigation into an international trafficking ring.

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United States Attorney’s Office, Central District of California

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In other cases, murders were allegedly committed.

“Wedding and Clark allegedly directed the November 20, 2023 murders of two members of a family in Ontario, Canada, in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. The agency says another person was killed in May over an unpaid debt, allegedly on the orders of Wedding and Clark.

Twelve of the 16 accused were arrested. They include four Canadians arrested in Ontario this week and three Canadians arrested in the United States, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. But Wedding and several others remain at large.

If convicted, Wedding and several co-defendants “would face a mandatory minimum sentence of life in federal prison for the murder and attempted murder charges,” according to the Justice Department. Other charges in this case also carry equally severe penalties.

This is the second time U.S. authorities have brought serious drug charges against Wedding: in 2009, he was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and served more than a year in prison. Canadian authorities had also previously investigated him in drug investigations.

At the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, Wedding placed 24th in the parallel giant slalom, according to his Olympic bio page.