In brief
- The U.S. Treasury has placed sanctions on “drug kingpin” Ryan James Wedding, nine of his associates, and nine entities linked to him.
- Wedding is a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder who FBI Director Kash Patel says is now “the modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar.”
- The ex-Olympian’s crime gang is believed to be a transnational cocaine empire, with Wedding allegedly ordering “dozens” of murders.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Wednesday placed sanctions on “drug kingpin” Ryan James Wedding, nine of his associates, and nine entities linked to him.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been on the hunt for former Olympic athlete Wedding for over a year now, and placed the man on its most wanted fugitives list for his alleged cocaine empire.
“You do not get to be a drug kingpin and evade the law. Make no mistake about it: Ryan Wedding is the modern-day iteration of Pablo Escobar. He is a modern-day iteration of El Chapo Guzmán,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a press conference. “This inter-agency step is a huge, huge step towards obtaining justice for so many American lives lost… and so many American lives saved.”
Wedding is a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder who placed 24th in the men’s parallel giant slalom at the 2002 Winter Olympics—after which he quit the sport. The Canadian is now facing mounting allegations of overseeing a transnational cocaine empire in which he purportedly used Tether’s USDT stablecoin to launder money and bypass traditional banking systems.
The U.S. Department of Justice seized more than $3.2 million in cryptocurrency, as well as one ton of cocaine, three firearms, dozens of rounds of ammunition, and $255,400 as part of the investigation in late 2024. The FBI believes that Wedding is “extremely violent” and has ordered “dozens” of murders using “highly sophisticated methods,” one of the major factors putting him on the FBI’s most wanted list.
The new sanctions mean that the affected people and entities will have all of their U.S. assets frozen by the OFAC, with potential criminal penalties if broken.
Among others, the sanctioned individuals include his wife, Miryam Andrea Castillo Moreno; Edgar Aaron Vazquez Alvarado, who allegedly protects the former Olympian; and Canadian jeweler Rolan Sokolovski, who is believed to have helped launder funds.
Sokolovski runs a jewelry business in Toronto called Diamond Tsar, which the Treasury claims was used to help launder Wedding’s illicit funds. Specifically, Sokolovski is believed to have transferred millions of dollars in drug money using crypto to hide the money’s tracks.
“Today we’re exposing the network of associates and enablers behind Ryan Wedding—one of the most notorious criminals and narcotraffickers still evading justice,” John K. Hurley, under secretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in the release.
“Treasury is joining with the FBI and the Department of Justice to cut Wedding and his criminal partners off from the U.S. financial system and help dismantle the network they rely on,” he added. “Our goal is simple: make it difficult for criminals like this to profit from poisoning our communities.”
In March, the FBI put a $10 million bounty on information that leads to the former Olympian’s arrest, although it apparently has yet to pay off. This bounty has now been upped to $15 million, alongside the added sanctions.
Wedding is believed to be currently hiding in Mexico, and the Treasury is coordinating with Mexican authorities to track him down.
“This department and this FBI will work with our Canadian counterparts and government officials across the world to bring him to justice,” Patel said. “He is responsible for engineering a narco-trafficking, narco-terrorism program we have not seen for a long time. He will not evade justice.”
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Source: https://decrypt.co/349242/modern-day-pablo-escobar-treasury-sanctions-ex-olympian-crypto-crime-empire
