‘Olympic athlete-turned-drug lord’: FBI alleges former Canadian snowboarder Ryan Wedding ordered Caledon killings, ran massive cocaine ring

A Canadian former Olympic snowboarder is wanted by the FBI for allegedly running a massive international cocaine ring that directed four killings in Ontario — including the slaying of an Indian couple in Caledon last year that police say was a case of mistaken identity.
Ryan James Wedding, 43, who competed for Canada in the 2002 Winter Olympics, and Andrew Clark, 34, who is in custody, are facing a suite of charges after allegedly directing the killings in retaliation for a stolen drug shipment.
The attack left Jagtar Singh Sidhu, 57, and Harbhajan Kaur Sidhu, 55, dead and their daughter, Jaspreet Kaur Sidhu, critically injured, after gunmen stormed their rental home on Nov. 20.
The couple were “an innocent family” targeted in an act of alleged retaliation, Marty Kearns, the deputy commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police said in a statement released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In a brief statement to the Star, Jaspreet said she and her brother were thankful for the hard work by police and the FBI.
“We are still looking for answers about why our family was shot and how this took place,” she said, directing further questions to her lawyer.
“An Olympic athlete-turned-drug lord is now charged with leading a transnational organized crime group that engaged in cocaine trafficking and murder, including of innocent civilians,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement.
Wedding and Clark are also accused of ordering the May 18 murder this year of another victim over “a drug debt,” U.S. authorities said. Peel Regional Police identified the victim Thursday as 39-year-old Mohammed Zafar of Brampton, who was killed in a shooting near Mississauga Road and Sandalwood Parkway.
Additionally, Clark and another suspect, Malik Damion Cunningham — also a Canadian resident — are facing charges in the death of 29-year-old Randy Fader in Niagara on April 1. 
The double homicide in Caledon was previously linked by the OPP to a series of shootings that occurred in Peel Region last November. Those included three residential shootings in Brampton between Nov. 7 and Nov. 14, in which no injuries were reported, and a fatal shooting in Mississauga on Nov. 15 that left Jagraj Singh, a 19-year-old Brampton resident, dead.
On Thursday, the OPP emphasized that the victims of the Caledon shooting “were not the actual intended targets.”
It was a “case of mistaken identity,” an OPP spokesperson told the Star in an email. “Investigators believe that the suspects were looking for a specific person and their family.”
The FBI announced the charges Thursday as part of an ongoing investigation into a cocaine trafficking operation in which Wedding, Clark and 14 others allegedly conspired to traffic hundreds of kilograms of Colombian cocaine.
Records filed in U.S. court detail a complex law-enforcement operation that went into action after the Caledon killings.
The investigation allegedly caught Wedding and Clark leading a criminal enterprise that repeatedly sought to ship cocaine from California to Canada using long-haul semi-trucks.
Those records detail how Wedding and Clark allegedly asked another individual to arrange the transport, not knowing that person was a confidential informant working with law enforcement.
In April, the documents say, U.S. authorities seized 375 kilograms of cocaine in Riverside, Calif., then stopped another attempt to ship hundreds more kilograms the next month.
Wedding, Clark and Cunningham have been charged under U.S. law for allegedly ordering the related Ontario killings in the furtherance of the U.S. criminal enterprise, according to the court records.
Wedding, whose aliases include “El Jefe,” “Giant,” and “Public Enemy,” competed in the parallel giant slalom event at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. According to a profile in the Vancouver Sun, he was one of the last to be named to Canada’s nine-member snowboarding team. 
Both Wedding and Clark were living in Mexico, according to the U.S. Justice Department; Clark was arrested by Mexican authorities on Oct. 8 while Wedding remains at large. 
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to his arrest and extradition to the U.S.
The OPP have yet to arrest the people who carried out the Caledon killings.
It was just before midnight when at least one gunman wearing a black hoodie stormed into a rental home on Mayfield Road and shot the couple and their daughter, Jaspreet, as they were getting ready for bed.
Their son, Gurdit, wasn’t home at the time.
Jagtar was pronounced dead at the scene, while Harbhajan died in hospital two weeks later.
Their daughter Jaspreet, who was shot 13 times, suffered life-threatening injuries and was released from hospital earlier this year.
With files from Abby O’Brien