Special to WorldTribune.com

By Allan Wall,  February 2, 2026

I recently reported the case of Ryan Wedding, a Canadian snowboarder in the 2002 Winter Olympics who is now in U.S. custody, accused of being a major drug trafficker with the Sinaloa Cartel.

Wedding ran an operation transporting cocaine from Colombia through Mexico to the U.S. and Canada. His operation would move it by truck from Mexico to Los Angeles.

By 2005, Wedding made it to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

Wedding’s FBI wanted poster reads:

“Ryan James Wedding is wanted for allegedly running and participating in a transnational drug trafficking operation that routinely shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and Southern California, to Canada, and other locations in the United States. Additionally, it is alleged that Wedding was involved in orchestrating multiple murders in furtherance of these drug crimes.”

From the Toronto Star:

“Ryan Wedding walked into a California courtroom with a sneer, eyeing investigators in the front row and a swarm of journalists packing the gallery. Once a top FBI fugitive, Wedding finally faced a U.S. judge in federal court this week, where he pleaded not guilty to 17 felony charges — including murder, drug trafficking and other alleged crimes.”

The U.S. and Mexican governments publicly disagree about how Wedding was arrested.

“Wedding’s capture has become a major diplomatic flashpoint between two governments. At issue: What exactly did U.S. agents do inside Mexico? According to Mexican officials, Wedding voluntarily surrendered himself to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. If you ask American law enforcement leaders, and Wedding’s lawyer, they’d tell you that’s wrong; He was nabbed in what the FBI Director Kash Patel has called a “high-stakes” tactical operation by U.S. agents. The problem is that from the Mexican perspective, the FBI isn’t supposed to be operating on Mexican soil. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has challenged Patel’s description, saying her government would never allow a foreign power to execute such an operation…While the FBI has declined to share more details about the nature of his arrest, the Wall Street Journal has reported that Mexican security forces were closing in when they were joined by U.S. authorities who, following an intense negotiation, apprehended Wedding. It remains unclear if we’ll ever learn the truth.”

On Jan. 22, 2026, Wedding turned himself in at the new billion-dollar U.S. embassy in Mexico City. Negotiations had been going on several weeks previous.

So why did he turn himself in and what does the deal consist of? Is Wedding going to rat out a lot of other people?

Another curiosity is that the day he turned himself in, FBI Director Kash Patel was at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, on an unpublicized visit. Hmm, that’s interesting.

And how about this photo of U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ron Johnson, Mexican Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch, and FBI Director Kash Patel, together?

  How was Ryan Wedding taken into custody and why was Kash Patel in Mexico City?, WorldTribune.com