From Olympic venues to the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted, a detailed account of the crypto crime trajectory of a former Olympic skier

November 19, 2025, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury officially designated Ryan James Wedding, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder, along with his core associates and entities, to the sanctions list, freezing all assets within the United States and prohibiting any transactions with U.S. persons. Following this, the U.S. State Department increased the bounty to $15 million. The Mexican Embassy in China simultaneously released a reporting tutorial, and the FBI, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Mexican authorities launched a cross-border joint operation—this global crackdown on the “Olympic athlete drug lord” revealed the deep links between cryptocurrency, transnational drug trafficking, and serial murders. BlockSec, leveraging on-chain tracking technology and specialized research data, reconstructed Wedding’s fall from a sports star to a criminal boss, as well as his use of blockchain to build an “untraceable” criminal fund network.

1. From Olympic Athlete to “Global Most Wanted”

Born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, in 1976, Wedding was once a promising star in winter sports. With a sharp sliding style and stable competitive performance, he successfully joined the Canadian national team, representing Canada at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, where he gained prominence in the men’s parallel giant slalom event. At that time, he was one of Canada’s representatives in winter sports, and his attention both on and off the field accustomed him to the spotlight, but also planted a fixation on “quick success.”

After the Olympics, Wedding’s life took a sharp turn downward. He refused to renew his contract with the professional team, abandoned his years-long skiing career, and turned to high-risk commercial ventures, eventually intersecting with transnational drug trafficking groups. In 2008, he was arrested in California for cocaine smuggling and sentenced to four years in prison in 2010—this incarceration not only failed to reform him but became a stepping stone for expanding his criminal network. In prison, he befriended various criminals, laying the foundation for his later cross-border drug trafficking network. After release, Wedding completely shed his “former Olympic athlete” disguise, transforming into a criminal boss codenamed “El Jefe” (Spanish for “The Boss”), and established a drug trafficking organization named after himself (Ryan Wedding Drug Trafficking Organization), recognized by U.S. and Canadian authorities as an “independent criminal entity.”

Wedding’s criminal group is notorious for its brutality and sophisticated operations. By colluding deeply with the Sinaloa cartel (designated as a “terrorist organization” by the U.S. in 2024), they built a smuggling route from Colombia’s cocaine production areas, through Mexico, and into the U.S. and Canada, smuggling about 60 tons of drugs annually, with an annual case value exceeding $1 billion, posing a major threat to Canadian national security. To maintain the network, Wedding was willing to resort to violence: in November 2023, after a batch of drugs was stolen, he ordered a massacre in Ontario, Canada, resulting in 2 deaths and 1 serious injury; between April and May 2024, his gang carried out two murders, including related personnel owing drug debts; in January 2025, to cover up his crimes, he directed his subordinates to shoot and kill federal witness Acebedo García at close range in a Colombian restaurant, with five gunshot wounds to the head, on