Olympic athlete Ryan Wedding pleads not guilty in US drug trafficking case
Former Olympian Ryan Wedding has pleaded not guilty after being arrested in Mexico. Prosecutors allege he led a major drug trafficking network.
Snowboarder Ryan Wedding, who completed the race for Canada, was a footnote at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. he finished in 24th placeth According to U.S. officials, he took first place in the men’s parallel giant slalom, but immediately after retiring from snowboarding, he embarked on a murderous career.
Wedding, 44, pleaded not guilty on Monday, January 26, in federal court in Santa Ana, California, to charges that he was a key figure in a cocaine smuggling scheme in multiple drug-related murders, Reuters reported.
“He went from being an Olympic snowboarder to being the biggest drug trafficker of our time,” FBI Director Kash Patel said at a recent press conference.
Wedding is accused of “running and participating in a cross-border drug trafficking operation that transported hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia through Mexico and Southern California to Canada and other parts of the United States, and whose leaders orchestrated multiple murders in furtherance of these drug crimes,” according to the indictment.
According to Reuters, Wedding is charged with ordering the murder of two people, attempted murder of a third person, and ordering the murder of another person.
Patel also likened Wedding to former head of the Medellin cartel, Pablo Escobar. Escobar, who was killed during a gunfight in 1993, was convicted of drug trafficking, extortion and murder.
His wedding was the subject of an internal investigation before his arrest in Mexico on January 22nd. He was then sent to the United States for criminal charges.
Law enforcement officials consider Los Angeles to be the center of Wedding’s drug distribution network.
Contributor: Mark Giannotto
