Rows of shiny Ducati superbikes, all lined up like prizes in some secret garage down in Mexico, are now just gathering dust in police evidence rooms. These aren’t your average motorcycles they’re part of a massive $40 million seizure connected to Ryan James Wedding, the guy from Canada who used to chase snowboarding dreams at the Olympics but now finds himself on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for supposedly heading up a vicious drug operation.
Wedding’s 44 now, originally from Thunder Bay in Ontario. He represented Canada at the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City and finished 24th in the men’s parallel giant slalom. If you check his Wikipedia page, it pulls that straight from the official records nothing fancy, just the facts.
A tweet from X.
After the Olympics, things took a dark turn for him. He got nailed in 2010 on cocaine trafficking charges and did about three and a half years in a U.S. prison. From there, cops say he bounced back and built this whole network moving huge loads of coke from Colombia, through Mexico, and into Canada and the States. He’s got alleged links to the Sinaloa Cartel, too. A U.S. Treasury statement from November 2025 puts it bluntly: Wedding’s crew isn’t just about smuggling drugs; they’re tied to several killings as well. Even FBI Director Kash Patel went on ABC News calling him a “modern-day Pablo Escobar.”
The big busts happened in early December 2025. Mexican authorities, with help from the FBI and RCMP, raided four spots in Mexico City and the surrounding state. They hauled in 62 fancy bikes mostly Ducatis worth around $40 million, along with a couple of cars, some artwork, bits of meth and weed, ammo, paperwork, and even two Olympic medals (though sources say those aren’t Wedding’s). Back in November, they also grabbed this ultra-rare 2002 Mercedes-Benz CLK-GTR Roadster valued at $13 million from his buddies. It’s all about hitting these crooks where it hurts freezing their luxury toys bought with illegal cash so they can’t flip them or enjoy them.
Yeah, it’s real: Wedding landed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted back in March 2025, with a $15 million bounty on his head. The charges include murder, like ordering a hit on a witness in Colombia in 2025 and a botched killing in 2023 that took out an innocent Canadian couple in Ontario by mistake. What’s not fully nailed down yet? The exact paper trail on every single bike the probe’s still going. But the FBI did confirm on December 29, 2025, via their site, that they believe the motorcycles are Wedding’s.
For folks in the U.S., this stuff feels personal. His operation’s been pumping cocaine onto American streets, feeding addictions and sparking violence left and right. It shines a light on how these cartels wash billions through flashy buys, putting extra pressure on borders and cops. As one piece from TRM Labs pointed out,
“His outfit reportedly raked in billions, letting him stockpile all these high-end assets while staying off the radar”.
It’s a wild mix of athletic fame and cartel underworld, but the hunt’s far from over. Wedding’s a big dude 6’3″, 240 pounds, with a lion tattoo and he’s holed up somewhere in Mexico, speaking fluent Spanish, probably armed and slippery as hell. They’re calling the effort Operation Giant Slalom, aiming to finally bring him in.
