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Sead Fadilpašić
Journalist
Sead Fadilpašić
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The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has offered a reward of up to $10 million for the capture of former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding, who’s been accused of drug- and homicide-related crimes.
Wedding became known to the cryptosphere due to the allegations that he and his co-conspirators used Tether (USDT) for drug sales, to avoid traditional banking systems, and to launder money.
The 43-year-old Canadian national has now been added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, the FBI’s announcement said.
Additionally, the $10 million reward supplements the FBI’s existing offering of $50,000 for information leading to Wedding’s arrest. This reward is jointly offered with assistance from the Canadian and Mexican governments.
Meanwhile, Wedding competed in the Giant Slalom snowboarding competition during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. However, in the years after that, he adopted aliases such as ‘El Jefe,’ ‘Giant,’ ‘Public Enemy,’ ‘James Conrad King,’ and ‘Jesse King,’ allegedly committing a number of serious crimes.
The authorities claim he has been running a transnational drug trafficking network that shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California, to Canada and the US.
Furthermore, they said he orchestrated multiple murders and an attempted murder.
“Wedding went from shredding powder on the slopes at the Olympics to distributing powder cocaine on the streets of U.S. cities and in his native Canada,” said Akil Davis, the Assistant Director of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.
Mexican authorities arrested Wedding’s second-in-command, 34-year-old Canadian Andrew Clark, last October. Clark was among the 29 fugitives that arrived in the US from Mexico last week, the FBI said.
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Sinaloa Cartel is No Stranger to USDT
In June 2024, the US authorities charged Wedding, Clark, and several other people with the above-noted crimes.
The document by the United States District Court for the Central District of California provides further insight into the organization’s operations, alleging that defendants and others would use USDT to pay Wedding and Clark for drugs.
According to the document, “on June 18, 2024, via [the encrypted messaging application] Threema, defendant [Nahim Jorge Bonilla] sent the [confidential source] a screenshot showing that he had paid 17,300 USDT into the tether wallet account that [a co-conspirator] had sent the QR code for.”
Wedding is currently on the run, possibly hiding in Mexico under the protection of the notorious Sinaloa cartel.
Notably, Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, including Sinaloa, increasingly relied on cryptocurrencies, especially USDT, to facilitate their illicit operations, the US Federal authorities claimed in November 2024.
A confidential source said at the time that USDT is available in Mexico at a discounted rate because of its links to drug proceeds. Mexican-based groups sell USDT at a lower price than its market value, knowing that its association with criminal activity taints it.
Then, these same USDT tokens are sold at higher prices in countries like Colombia.
Additionally, court documents argued that drug traffickers adopted crypto to bypass traditional financial systems and establish a more efficient way to transfer wealth.
Therefore, USDT has become a popular vehicle for laundering money across borders, the US Federal authorities argued.
A Tether spokesperson said that transactions related to criminal activities typically occur on the secondary market and are not directly sourced from Tether’s authorized channels.
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