Mexican federal agents join Canadian fugitive wedding hunting

Mexico affected federal elite agents to hunt Canadian Ryan marriage, CBC News learned.

Their involvement in the search for the former Olympian – one of the most sought after the FBI – reports a continuous thaw in relations between the Mexican authorities and their American counterparts, who previously accused local officials of helping marriage.

Wedding, which contributed to Canada as a snowboarder at the 2002 Utah Olympic Games, is accused of having run an American criminal business of $ 1 billion that regularly passes cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine trucks across North America. Mexico has also linked the wedding network to international arms trafficking.

The Thunder Bay, have., Originally and its second commander, his Canadian compatriot Andrew Clark, are accused of orchestrating four murders between them in Ontario, including the erroneous identity shootings of a Couple visiting India.

The FBI suggested that marriage living in Mexico under the protection of the Sinaloa cartel, once led by the notorious lord of the drug Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

The FGR of Mexico, a federal agency for the application of the law affiliated to the attorney general of the country, confirmed “(it is) in search of Mr. Wedding”.

An FGR representative provided the Six Word Declaration to CBC News by the Mexico Embassy in Ottawa. In a sign of secrecy surrounding the operation, the agency refused to be contacted directly.

A working group conducting wedding research, 44, probably also involves Interpol and the Mexican navy. The two agencies participated in the arrest of Clark last year in a spectacular day operation in a restaurant in the Guadalajara region.

Clark awaits his trial in California, after Mexico presented him in February, in the midst of a large -scale transfer of suspect characters from the cartel.

Under pressure from the Trump administration, the government of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum sought to repress the main drug cartels that the United States and Canada consider terrorist organizations.

Mexico “has made progress under the Sheinbaum administration, but … for decades, government representatives have been in bed with the criminal world,” said F. Cartwright Weiland, head of the US State Department.

Weiland and the FBI both suggested wedding advantages of high -level connections in Mexico.

“History so far has been one in which these two facets of the company – Cartels and government representatives – work in tandem to allow it to escape capture,” said Weiland.

The State Department offers a reward of up to $ 10 million for information leading to the arrest of Wedding.

The FBI recently revealed that it concentrated information collection efforts on a region surrounding Mexico City, investigators requesting advice from residents through a campaign on social networks. The CBC visual surveys unit determined that a photo in 2024 of Wedding, published by the FBI, was taken in the Mexican capital.

The American agency has also suggested that marriage may have since suffered plastic surgery in order to change its appearance.

“They will finally catch it,” said former DEA international operations chief Mike Vigil. “If he is in Mexico, he will stand out,” said Vigil about the former six -foot and three inch athlete.

Look | How we identified the wedding photo:

Canadian followed on the FBI’s most sought after list

CBC News Visual Investigations Team, in partnership with international researchers from the Bellingcat Discord community, located the exact place where one of the last images of Ryan marriage was taken. Wedding, an alleged Canadian drug lord, is among the 10 most sought -after FBI fugitives. CBC is the first to report and confirm these results.

Marriage has already been imprisoned in the United States for a conspiracy of cocaine involving a criminal network based in Vancouver, but has been on the run since the RCMP has brought new charges against him in 2015.

Los Angeles prosecutors appointed him the main defendant last fall among 16 accused of Operation Giant Slalom, who sought to dismantle what the authorities called “the organization of marriage drug trafficking”.

Since then, the RCMP has recognized that its network remains active, while American prosecutors have warned that marriage probably has access to a “network of wages” in the LAM.

The alleged accomplices fight extradition

This week, a Toronto court heard lawyers this week for two of the alleged marriage accomplices, Hardeep Ratte and Gurpreet Singh, are looking for the disclosure of new evidence while they are fighting against the United States for the United States

Ratte and his nephew Singh, both of the Toronto region, face accusations for allegations they have coordinated California’s Bulk cocaine shipments in Canada, for a lump sum rate of $ 220,000 per truck.

Singh’s lawyer, Brian Greenspan. said he wants to know more about the knowledge by the police for the kidnapping of his client last year. According to court documents, Singh was held by cartel members in Mexico on a debt of $ 600,000, until marriage allegedly negotiates its release.

Greenspan also pointed out that some of the evidence of the American affair were collected in Canada, including the registration of the police of a key meeting involving Singh, Ratte and an FBI informant in an automotive body workshop in Brampton, Ontario.

Greenspan asked how the case would take place among the reports that the informant was murdered earlier this year in Colombia.

“This person met his death in the meantime and is no longer available as a witness,” he told the hearing on Monday before the Ontario Superior Court.

American prosecutors said in the judicial archives that the informants have tracked drugs with marriage for more than a decade and agreed in 2023 to help investigators in the hope that he would not face charges.

“There has never been any admission that, in fact, he died,” said Greenspan, “but we all know that he is dead.”