The former Canadian Olympic athlete, one of the FBI’s priority targets, accused of drug trafficking and several homicides north of the Rio Grande, has surrendered to the United States authorities at its embassy in Mexico, as reported this Friday by the coordinator of the federal Security Cabinet, Omar García Harfuch. The US authorities have taken , a former athlete from the Canadian snowboard team, to their territory, taking advantage of the visit to Mexico by the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kash Patel.
In a message on his In addition to Wedding, Harfuch refers to Alejandro Rosales Castillo, an American national, who like Wedding was on the list of the 10 most wanted fugitives by the FBI.
In another message on his X account, Patel also reported the arrest. “Wedding was taken into custody last night [el jueves por la noche] in Mexico. He is being transferred from Mexico to the United States,” he said. “Wedding is believed to have been hiding in Mexico for more than a decade and has been wanted on charges of cocaine trafficking and murder since 2024. He allegedly directed and participated in a transnational drug trafficking operation that routinely shipped hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and southern California, to the United States and Canada, as a member of the Sinaloa Cartel,” he added. The US justice system accuses him of drug trafficking. cocaine, murder, attempted murder and continued criminal enterprise, among other crimes.
Wedding’s fall, the details of which are currently unknown, occurs just two months after US authorities increased pressure on him. In November, the FBI announced it had increased the reward for information leading to his capture to $15 million. At the same time, the Treasury Department announced sanctions against him and his network of collaborators and companies. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) detailed its support network. An alleged former Mexican security agent stood out, Edgar Vázquez Alvarado, designated as the head of his security team. “Vázquez, alias El General, provides protection in Mexico and uses police contacts to locate his targets. Vázquez is believed to be a former Mexican law enforcement officer with ties to senior law enforcement officials in the country.”
In addition to Vázquez, the list includes Wedding’s “wife,” Miryam Andrea Castillo Moreno, 34, originally from Nuevo León, in northern Mexico; his “girlfriend”, Daniela Alejandra Acuña Macías, a Colombian, 23 years old, who the authorities locate near Morelia, in Michoacán; an alleged Colombian collaborator of the Canadian, Carmen Yelinet Valoyes, who, according to OFAC, runs a high-class prostitution network in Mexico City; Canadian lawyer Deepak Balwant Paradkar, who “introduced Wedding to drug traffickers who distributed his cocaine and also helped him with bribes and murders,” arrested days later; the Canadian jeweler Rolan Sokolovski and the former member of the Italian special forces Gianluca Tiepolo, the latter part of his laundering network.
The pressure continued in the following weeks. In December, Mexican authorities seized an impressive fleet of vehicles, supposedly belonging to Wedding, in the capital and the State of Mexico: more than 60 luxury motorcycles, worth approximately $40 million, as well as drugs, cars, works of art and medals. But the Canadian seemed like a ghost. He was known to be in the country, as Harfuch acknowledged, in March of last year. But not where. In October 2024, the Navy had arrested one of its collaborators in Jalisco, who was later handed over to the United States. The lack of details about Wedding’s capture adds uncertainty to an already enigmatic character, a man who could have ruled the world of winter sports, but who ended up reigning on the cocaine trails of the Americas.
