{"id":664656,"date":"2025-12-31T12:27:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T12:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/664656\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T12:27:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T12:27:16","slug":"motorcycles-worth-40m-seized-in-hunt-for-ex-olympic-snowboarder-on-fbis-ten-most-wanted-list-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/664656\/","title":{"rendered":"Motorcycles worth $40m seized in hunt for ex-Olympic snowboarder on FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list | World News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mexican officials have seized dozens of motorcycles worth around $40m in the hunt for a former Olympic snowboarder who is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. <\/p>\n

Canadian Ryan Wedding, 44, has been accused of running a multi-national drug trafficking network and is additionally facing charges in connection with the killing of a federal witness.<\/p>\n

US authorities believe he is living in Mexico<\/a><\/strong> under the protection of the Sinaloa Cartel, with up to $15m (\u00a311m) being offered for information leading to his arrest.<\/p>\n

\"Wedding<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Wedding pictured in 2024. Pic: FBI\/AP<\/p>\n

This month, Mexican authorities executed multiple search warrants and seized a large number of motorcycles believed to be owned by Wedding.<\/p>\n

In a statement this week, the FBI said the bikes had an estimated value of approximately $40m (\u00a330m).<\/p>\n

\"Pic:<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Pic: FBI<\/p>\n

\"Pic:<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Pic: FBI<\/p>\n

Other items confiscated included artworks and medals.<\/p>\n

The FBI said the seizures came with assistance from Mexican authorities, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Los Angeles Police Department.<\/p>\n

\"Pic:<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Pic: FBI<\/p>\n

\"Pic:<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Pic: FBI<\/p>\n

Wedding competed for Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where he finished 24th in the men’s parallel giant slalom event.<\/p>\n

Officials in the US<\/a><\/strong> and Canada<\/a><\/strong> have compared the former sportsman to other famous drug kingpins, including Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Pablo Escobar.<\/p>\n

\"Wedding<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Wedding competed for Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Pic: Reuters<\/p>\n

Last month, Wedding was accused of orchestrating the killing of a witness in Colombia<\/a><\/strong> to help him avoid extradition to the US in January.<\/p>\n

Ten other defendants were arrested on the charges in the federal indictment, which was unsealed in California.<\/p>\n

Read more from Sky News:
Four killed in US strike on alleged drug boat<\/a>
A decade of county lines leaves its scars on children<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Authorities have accused Wedding of working closely with the Sinaloa Cartel to funnel massive quantities of drugs into the US and Canada.<\/p>\n

Wedding, whose aliases include El Jefe, Public Enemy and James Conrad King, was charged in 2024 with running a drug ring that moves some 60 tons of cocaine a year using long-haul lorries to bring the drugs between Colombia, Mexico, Southern California and Canada.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Authorities say he and his co-conspirators used a Canadian website called The Dirty News to post a photograph of the witness so he could be identified and killed.<\/p>\n

The witness was then followed to a restaurant in Medellin and shot in the head in January.<\/p>\n

US Attorney General Pam Bondi said last month: “Whether you are a street-level drug dealer … or an international drug kingpin, we are coming for you.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mexican officials have seized dozens of motorcycles worth around $40m in the hunt for a former Olympic snowboarder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-664656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115814180329647238","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}