Countless Canadian gangsters have made the long journey home from Mexico in a body bag.
This will almost certainly be the fate of Olympic snowboarder-turned-alleged dope kingpin Ryan Wedding.
Not if. When.
On Thursday, the FBI made this fait accompli when they announced the Wedding — suspected of running a massive international dope ring and ordering murders — was named to the famed agency’s 10 Most Wanted List.
To sweeten the pot, the FBI is offering a US$10-million reward for information leading to Wedding’s arrest.
The 43-year-old is allegedly hiding out in Mexico under the protection of the bloodthirsty Sinaloa Cartel. But as previous big-league criminals have learned, heat from the G-Men may cause the cartel to rethink their generosity.
“Mexico is not the sanctuary Canadian criminals think it is,” organized crime expert Antonio Nicaso told the Toronto Sun. “For them, it is a very dangerous place.”
Equally dangerous are the fickle friendships of the underworld.
Wedding competed for Canada in snowboarding at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. Now, he is wanted by Canada and the U.S. for three homicides, cocaine trafficking and “leading a continuing criminal enterprise.”
Cops say the Thunder Bay native allegedly even played matchmaker between the Mexican cartels and criminal networks linked to Iran’s fanatical Revolutionary Guards and their psychopathic proxies, Hezbollah.
His tangle of thugs also allegedly murdered an Indian couple in a Caledon home in 2023. A case of mistaken identity.
Law enforcement suspect there may be more bodies linked to Wedding and his co-conspirators. His organization was suspected of moving cocaine and a whopping five metric tonnes of deadly fentanyl per month in Canada and the U.S.
LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton warned: “There is nowhere safe for Wedding to hide.”
While Wedding is almost certainly hiding in Mexico, the feds said he could also be on the lam in Canada, the U.S., Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, or a hundred other places.
The FBI’s key witness against Wedding was killed in Medellin, Colombia in January.
Antoni Nicaso said that in Canada, there are 350 organized crime groups pedalling fentanyl. There is no safe spot.
“It’s brought a changing of the criminal landscape. For Canadian criminals, the target is not the U.S. but Australia,” Nicaso said, adding that more fentanyl was seized in Melbourne than was nabbed going into the U.S. from Canada.
“And it comes from the port of Vancouver. A $1,300 investment can make tens of millions of dollars.”
Nicaso said Wedding should not count on his Mexican benefactors in the long run.
“It won’t be safe for him there but that depends on his relationships,” Nicaso added. “The Sinaloa cartel is fragmented and in a state of civil war, the Chapitos (loyalists to the now-caged El Chapo) feel betrayed and the two groups are killing each other.”
Wedding may have a target on his back from the breakaway Sinaloa faction, the rival Jalisco Cartel, the FBI, the RCMP or a local fink who decides to cash in and drop a dime to the cops.
“Loyalty isn’t permanent. It’s a currency in the underworld. Other mobsters have found out the hard way, that safety is a temporary state of being in Mexico,” he said.
And if Wedding outlives his usefulness or the heat from law enforcement becomes too oppressive? “Then he’s a dead man,” Nicaso said.
Hells Angels associate Mathieu “Barbu” Bélanger, 39, discovered that when he was clipped in Playa del Carmen on Dec. 21. In 2018, the body of Bolton mobster Daniele Ranieri, 33, was found bound in a ditch near Cancun. He had been executed.
His buddy, Angelo Musitano hitter Michael Cudmore, was found dead in a car in 2020.
Odds are better than even that one-time Olympian Ryan Wedding will be lying down on a podium of death.
@HunterTOSun