Ryan Wedding, a former Olympian snowboarder, has been placed on the FBI‘s ‘Ten Most Wanted Fugitives’ list after being charged with operating a transnational drug smuggling scheme and multiple counts of murder.

Mr Wedding, aka ‘El Jefe’, competed in the Giant Slalom snowboarding competition during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

“Wedding’s placement on the top 10 list marks the 535th addition to the FBI’s list of notorious fugitives,” said the Justice Department on Thursday. “Wedding will replace Alexis Flores who is wanted by FBI Philadelphia. Although Flores is being removed from the list today, he will remain on the FBI’s website on its Most Wanted page.”

The addition of Mr Wedding’s name to the infamous list was announced by Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, on Thursday.

Mr Wedding is wanted for running a cross-border drug trafficking operation that routinely engages in shipping hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California, to Canada and other locations in the U.S.

The 43-year-old is also accused of sanctioning multiple murders and an attempted murder.

In June 2024, Mr Wedding and his second-in-command, Andrew Clark, 34, also Canadian, were first indicted and charged out of the Central District of California with running a criminal enterprise associated with the possession, distribution, and export of deadly drugs before a superseding federal jury indicted them with 14 additional charges on drug trafficking and commission of murders in September of the same year.

“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 Davis.

He added, “The alleged murders of his competitors make Wedding a very dangerous man, and his addition to the list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, coupled with a major reward offer by the State Department, will make the public our partner so that we can catch up with him before he puts anyone else in danger.”

Meanwhile, under the Narcotics Rewards Programme, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has approved a $10 million reward for information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of the fugitive.

If convicted, Wedding and Clark would face a mandatory minimum penalty of life in federal prison on their respective continuing criminal enterprise charge. The murder and attempted murder charges carry a mandatory minimum penalty of 20 years in federal prison. The drug trafficking charges carry mandatory minimum penalties of 10 to 15 years in prison.