It was like a ghost sighting. And the FBI agents had to be sure they weren’t mistaken.
The investigators, conducting surveillance near a Starbucks in Mexico City on Jan. 22, 2024, had just seen two men walk in.
One of them, a hulking six-foot-three-inch figure, may just have been the ghost they’d been hunting.
They checked a 2013 Quebec driver’s licence photo to be certain. He looked different, all these years later. But there was little doubt when the man was later heard inside, using his real first name.
“Ryan.”
The FBI had managed to get eyes on Ryan James Wedding, a Canadian they suspected of running a violent cocaine-smuggling operation across South and North America.
The episode at the coffee shop — described by U.S. prosecutors in court documents summarizing their case against Wedding — amounts to the only sighting that authorities have confirmed publicly, since Wedding first fled criminal charges in 2015.
So, why didn’t they arrest him, then and there?
Ryan Wedding is seen in a 2013 Canadian driver's licence photo, left, and in a picture taken sometime in 2024 and distributed by U.S. investigators. (FBI)The question has been swirling on social media since U.S. federal authorities earlier this month announced new charges against Wedding, 44, and his alleged associates and increased the bounty for his capture to $15 million.
For starters, there’s the jurisdiction issue. Any arrest in Mexico would have to be carried out by Mexican authorities, says retired FBI special agent Kenneth Gray.
“Even if the FBI had location information on Wedding, and the information was provided to the Mexican authorities, there is no guarantee that they would move on this information in a timely manner and make an arrest,” said Gray, now a professor in the criminal justice department at the University of New Haven, Conn.
But there’s another reason, as laid out in the hundreds of pages of indictments, extradition-related documents and other court records reviewed by CBC News over the past year.
It was the RCMP who had sought Wedding in 2015, when he was living in Montreal. Born in Thunder Bay, Ont., Wedding disappeared after he was charged in a large-scale conspiracy that involved bringing boat loads of cocaine from South America to Atlantic Canada.
By 2024, Wedding had surfaced in Mexico — living under aliases such as James Conrad King, Jesse King and Public Enemy — and was on the FBI’s radar. His drug-smuggling network, now linked to dozens of murders, had allegedly grown to a transnational empire, raking in $1 billion US a year.
Working with the Mounties, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Los Angeles police and other agencies, the FBI was building its own case against Wedding. It was only supposed to be a matter of time before Wedding was captured and put on trial in L.A.
That meeting at the Starbucks was just one step in the sprawling investigation.
That afternoon, Wedding talked business with two fellow Canadians. One would be in custody within months. The other — an FBI informant — would wind up dead.
Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, left, was killed in Medellin, Colombia, in January 2025 after working with the FBI to help bring down the violent drug-smuggling network allegedly led by fugitive Ryan Wedding. U.S. prosecutors allege Andrew Clark, right, acted as Wedding's top lieutenant. (Name withheld/U.S. Attorney's Office, Central District of California)The meeting had been set up by Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, a Montreal-born drug trafficker in his earlier 40s who’d befriended Wedding in 2011, as they both served time in a Texas prison.
After their release, Acebedo-Garcia started working for Wedding in two key roles, according to the U.S. prosecutors. He would co-ordinate Wedding’s cocaine shipments to Canada, and launder money back to him in Mexico.
The pair had communicated over encrypted chat platforms “almost daily or weekly” since 2013, the prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
But — little did Wedding know — their relationship had recently taken a turn.
A month before the meeting in Mexico City, Acebedo-Garcia had agreed to work with law enforcement, in the hopes of avoiding prosecution himself.
He would go on to help investigators infiltrate communications and meetings involving Wedding and his accomplices, according to court records, as part of the sprawling FBI-led Operation Giant Slalom, named after Wedding’s previous career as an Olympic snowboarder.
By January 2024, Acebedo-Garcia was working at the behest of the FBI and carried a recording device to that meeting over coffee.
Investigators identified the other man who’d walked in with Wedding as his network’s “second-in-command,” Andrew Clark. A former Toronto-area elevator mechanic, Clark had already met with Acebedo-Garcia earlier in the week, allegedly boasting about sending 2,000-3,000 kg of cocaine per month to Canada, including 600 kg to Alberta.
Clark and Acebedo-Garcia purportedly discussed a plan to hire a Toronto-area trucking network to move drugs from California to Canada, at a flat rate of between $175,000 to $225,000 per shipment.
WATCH | Ryan Wedding's path from Olympic snowboarder to most-wanted fugitive:Ryan Wedding once represented Canada as an Olympic snowboarder; now he’s accused of being a drug kingpin and is on the FBI’s most wanted list — with a $10 million US reward being offered for information leading to his arrest. CBC’s Thomas Daigle traces his shocking path from the top of the slopes to the underworld.The two men appeared to get along.
“Really nice to meet u bro ty for all,” Acebedo-Garcia told Clark over the encrypted messaging app Threema, according to excerpts of their chat included in Ontario court filings.
“Yes bro..very nice to meet you,” Clark responded, unaware the FBI was monitoring — and directing — his new friend’s communications.
Acebedo-Garcia would go on to have more meetings with other suspected Wedding accomplices in Brampton, Ont., and Dubai. He agreed to testify against the alleged kingpin at trial and helped the FBI gather enough evidence to finally make their move.
Clark was arrested on Oct. 8, 2024 in the Guadalajara area, in a dramatic operation involving the Mexican navy. He has pleaded not guilty to 11 charges related to a cocaine distribution conspiracy and four murders in Ontario, including the mistaken-identity shooting of an Indian family.
In all, more than 30 suspected members and associates of what U.S. prosecutors call the Wedding Criminal Enterprise have been indicted, with other arrests carried out in Colombia, Alberta, B.C., Ontario, Quebec, California and Florida.
But Wedding remains nowhere to be found.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi stands near a wanted poster of Wedding as she speaks with reporters during a news conference at the Department of Justice earlier this month in Washington. (Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press)In March, he was added to the FBI’s list of 10 most-wanted fugitives. CBC News reported months later that the FBI was focusing some manhunt efforts on a region in central Mexico, near the Mexican capital where he was seen in January 2024.
As for Acebedo-Garcia, he was fatally shot in the head while eating with friends at a restaurant in Medellin, Colombia, on Jan. 31, 2025 — almost exactly a year after the fateful meeting with Wedding and Clark at a Starbucks. U.S. prosecutors allege the assassination was orchestrated by Wedding.
“Our agents and law enforcement will relentlessly pursue you and anyone who assists you and bring you to justice,” Bill Essayli, L.A.’s top federal prosecutor vowed last week in a public warning to Wedding.
“Your days are numbered.”
CBC News senior reporter Thomas Daigle has extensively covered the search for Ryan Wedding. He can be reached by email at thomas.daigle@cbc.ca.