The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell
The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell

The Fall Of Canadian Cocaine King RYAN WEDDING: How The Drug Lord Was BETRAYED By The Sinaloa Cartel

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From Olympic snowboarder to one of the biggest cocaine traffickers in North American history — this is the unbelievable story of Ryan Wedding. In this episode, Johnny breaks down how a privileged C...

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The best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the best of the b...

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the Canadian drug kingpin who ran a billion-dollar-a-year cocaine empire while living in exile in Mexico.

Over the past 18 months, Wedding has become the most infamous, non-Mexican drug trafficker in the world, and definitely in the history of North America. He had a $15 million bounty on his head by the US Department of Justice, and this dark, cash-patel calling him the modern-day Pablo Escobar. I wouldn't go that far, but he was unquestionably the biggest Narcoslaidley Canada has ever seen. And then, as if to heighten his already legendary outlaw status, in January of this year,

Wedding posted a photo of himself to his Instagram account, evidently turning himself into a federal police station in Mexico City. And the next day, he was on a DEA plane to California, where he's currently being held without bail while he fights his case. So who is Ryan Wedding? Really? And how did he manage to go from Olympic snowboarder and small-time pot dealer to the largest single importer of cocaine

the United States and Canada have ever seen? And what happens next? Can he beat his case?

Or at least the most serious of the charges like murder and furtherance of a drug crime and running a continual criminal enterprise?

And why did he turn himself in? Is he already cooperating? We know most of these kingpins do. And could that have something to do with the 37 high-ranking cartel members who got extradited to the US on January 20th? Just two days before Wedding surrendered? Maybe he's been working with authorities this whole time.

All of these years he's been on the run, and now finally he's outlived his usefulness.

There's so much to unpack with this you guys. Leave your comments below and now let's get into it. The most fascinating, narko-gringo in history, Ryan Wedding. Right here on the connect with Johnny Mitchell. When it comes to success in any field, timing is everything. But that's especially true in the drug game, and Ryan Wedding was the benefactor of exceptional timing.

He got his start way back in 2002 when he was 21 years old. He just blown his snowboarding dreams at the Winter Olympics in Park City, Utah, where his teammates say that a snap of bad weather during one of his runs caused him to get rattled, and he finished a disappointing 24th place in the Men's Giant Slalom competition.

And this must have been incredibly difficult for young Ryan.

Remember, his lifelong dream was to become a professional snowboarder

and to win a medal for Canada in the Olympics. He grew up snowboarding from a very young age, in fact, his grandparents owned a ski hill in Ontario. Former teammates described him as focused, driven, and highly competitive. And that makes sense. This guy wants to be the best at everything he does. He's got that kind of personality.

So to watch his dreams go up and smoke like that in an instant, must have been heartbreaking. So after the Olympics, he gives up on snowboarding and relocates back to his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. And at this time, he doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. He briefly enrolls at Simon Fraser University and was apparently studying to become an engineer like his father.

But to make a little extra money, he starts working as a bouncer at Vancouver nightclubs that are frequented by gangsters from the Canadian Underworld. Now, I know what you're thinking. Gangsters and Canada sounds like an oxymoron. But I promise you, Canada has some badass criminals.

You see, organized crime is basically dead in the United States,

but it's thriving in Canada. Partly because of the lenient sentencing guidelines, and also because the Canadian Federal Government lacks the Rico style anti-mophia laws that dismantled organized crime here in the US. And in Vancouver, BC, you've got Chinese Mafia, Russian Mafia, Persian Mafia,

Hell's Angels, Bikers, and crazy ass Indian gangs. And apparently, young Ryan becomes enamored of this whole scene. It is a bouncer, you get to know a lot of people, obviously. Everybody wants to be your friend, so you'll let them in. And these Vancouver gangsters are probably slipping right at $100 bills,

so he'll let them skip the line. And this is where he first starts making contacts. Now, at this time, in the early 2000s, the weed business in Canada was booming. And Vancouver BC was the epicenter.

This was the BC bud era.

If you're my age or older, you'll remember this.

This is when thousands and thousands of large indoor and greenhouse growing operations

dotted the Vancouver metropolitan area. Millions of dollars were being made every day from shipping and bulk to the eastern provinces of Canada, as well as into the United States. Although I'm sure Ryan got started selling small-time hand-to-hand just like every drug dealer. Being a competitive guy, he probably realized just how big this thing could get.

And keep in mind, he's from a good family, an affluent family. His father owned his own engineering company and his mother was a nurse. And at the time, he was attending one of the most expensive universities in the country.

In fact, his father gave him a half a million dollar loan to get started in the real estate business.

Of course, he didn't have to sell drugs. But Ryan is a thrill-seeker, think about it. He spent his whole childhood snowboarding. He craves the adrenaline. There was no way he was going to settle for an ordinary square life.

And what's interesting about that is it characterizes a lot of the players in the Vancouver BC underworld. They actually come from middle-class and upper-middle-class families. That just shows you how goofy Canadians are.

There are a bunch of boards, suburban kids, cosplaying as gangsters.

But as you'll see, Ryan takes this cosplay to a whole different level. So by 2004, wedding has dropped out of Simon Fraser and is getting his fledgling drug empire off the ground. To the outside world and to his parents, he was a real estate speculator, a house flipper. But you can guess what was going on inside of those houses. You guys, I love drinking.

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Please support our show and tell them that we set you. By 2005, wedding is running a massive 8,000 plant. Marijuana grow on a farm owned by a friend of his in the town of Maple Ridge, just outside of Vancouver. Every couple weeks, he and his business partner

would harvest a round of plants and sell them to a pot broker. With each of them netting hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. But then in 2006, Ryan took a loss when the RCMP, which is Canada's version of the DEA, rated the farm and seized nearly 7,000 marijuana plants

at hundreds of pounds of manicured bud.

The estimated value was $10 million.

Now, Ryan wasn't at the property at the time of the raid, and authorities decided they didn't have enough evidence to charge him criminally, but there's no doubt that this put a big dent in his pockets. By 2007, he was complaining to friends that his money was running low, and that probably led him to make the move that would change his life forever.

I'm talking about co-cane ladies and gentlemen.

Remember how I told you that everything in the drug game

is timing and circumstance? Well, Canada, at that time, was opening up as a very important cocaine market. Chapo Guzman from the Scenaloacartel loved it. It was so much easier to infiltrate than the United States. It was easier for Mexicans to travel there.

Canadian law enforcement was slow and bureaucratic, and the wholesale price of a kilo of cocaine was at least $10,000 higher than in the US. If a key went for 25 in Chicago, it could sell for 35 in Toronto.

Canada also has enormous, sparsely populated land masses on both coasts,

which make for attractive maritime smuggling routes.

And as you'll soon see, young Ryan took advantage of all of this.

Canada was primed to have its first real drug lord.

But back in 2007, Ryan still hadn't met the plug. So, when he got approached by a prominent Russian mobster and an Iranian money launder about going in on a 24 kilo coke deal in San Diego, California, he took the bait. But as it turns out, the person selling them the kilos

was an undercover DE agent, and Ryan and his codies got arrested and were now facing serious fed time. And this is where we see a little bit of the psychopath megalomaniac side of Ryan Wedding start to manifest. First of all, the DE agents who arrested him said he showed no fear whatsoever,

only defiance, which is extremely rare, even for a career criminal. Secondly, wiretaps of Ryan's conversation from the MDC jail in San Diego to his associates back in Canada, reveal a guy who was not only not afraid of going to jail, but who was actually excited by all the cartel contacts he was making.

I'm making a bunch of good connections he was heard bragging about to his friend over the phone, and this makes sense.

MDC San Diego is crawling with low-level cartel people,

usually drug runners and human smugglers from Tijuana who got busted at the border.

This is where Ryan would have started making inroads with the scene

of low-acartel, who at that time had just taken over Tijuana from the long-standing Ariana Falix cartel. Another thing that made Ryan stand out from ordinary drug traffickers is that unlike his co-defendants who both pled out and received minimal prison sentences,

Ryan took his case all the way to trial. Now, if you know anything about the federal system, you'll know what an insane move that is. The feds had him dead to rights talking over a wiretap. Trust me, they've convicted people for a lot less.

But this is typical of sociopathic narcissistic behavior and inflated ego and the belief that the rules don't apply to them. Ryan may have already started believing he was untouchable. But of course, he was convicted and sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison.

But, at the last minute, the judge reduced his sentence to just four years. Like most reasonable people from the outside looking in, she saw a young man from a good family who made a stupid mistake and who surely didn't need a decade behind bars to learn his lesson. She could not have been more wrong.

It's possible that if Ryan had done the full 10 years, he would have thrown his hands up and said, "Okay, I'm done. I can't risk doing any more time in a place like this." But after he locked up and got special treatment from the judge,

he probably thought to himself, "Okay, this is meant to be. I'm going to use this time to learn the cocaine business and become the biggest kingpin Canada has ever seen." And that's exactly what happened.

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Once again, that's mengo2mars.com for 50% off. That's unbelievable. Thank you, Marsman. What I find so fascinating about him

was the complete disregard he had for his family and the community who stood behind him. While he was locked up at MDC, his parents came to visit him all the time.

And his former teammates and snowboarding coaches wrote character references to the judge on his behalf. They really loved this guy

and wanted to give him a second chance.

And this is where most drug dealers from middle class, normal backgrounds would have retired. Like me, for example, I grew up similar to Ryan Wedding.

Both my parents had good jobs. I had great friends and a great community. And when I got locked up, they really stood behind me. They gave me so much support.

So even though I knew I could have gotten back in the game and been an even bigger dealer after I got out of prison, I didn't do it because I didn't want to let my loved ones down.

I didn't want everyone I knew to turn their back on me if and when I got caught again.

But that's what separates me and most people

from a guy like Ryan Wedding. The dude is crazy. And for men, our mid to late 20s is when our personality really forms. So any untreated anti-social character traits

come to the surface around this time. So from 2009 to 2011, Ryan serves out his sentence at the Reeves Federal Correctional Institute. A low security prison in Texas,

which houses mostly undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes in the US. That meant a lot more Mexicans and possibly other Canadian criminals for Ryan to network with and learn from.

I also found it interesting to learn that he got no write-ups while he was locked up. He was kind of a model prisoner. And I think that speaks to his character and his career as a drug lord.

He never committed violence

or harmed anybody. He always was calling the shots. So while he was locked up at Reeves, he wasn't thinking about any foolishness. He wasn't into drugs.

He certainly wasn't using drugs. He wasn't selling drugs. He was studying. So in 2011, he gets out and gets deported back to Canada

and he relocates to Montreal, Quebec, the capital of organized crime in Canada. Young Ryan was all grown up and ready for the big time. By all accounts, he got busy right away.

Now at the beginning, he wouldn't have had the bankroll

to organize and fund large shipments directly

into the country. So what he likely did was start out as a cocaine broker. He knew cartel connects. He'd met in prison who could get

product into the country and Ryan could introduce them to buyers and take a fee. It only took him a few years before he was importing

thousand kilo shipments from the Caribbean, all the way up the Atlantic seaboard

and into the clandestine waterways

and deserted coastlines of Quebec and Newfoundland. This kind of smuggling is highly sophisticated and highly risky. It requires cooperation

from a lot of people, from boat captains, from the fishermen who unload the product in the open ocean and drive it on to land

and truck drivers and couriers who deliver it safely to the stash houses in Montreal. Orion was a natural leader and had the ability

to direct and impose his will on others. There's no evidence he ever broke down a kilo of coke or harmed anyone himself.

He ordered others to do it as only a boss would. Now, sometimes, during this period, he becomes close

with another Montreal drug trafficker named Filipos Coyados, who according to court records had ties

to drug lord Chapa Guzman and the Scenaloacartel. I think we can safely assume that this is how Orion meets his contacts

in the Scenaloacartel and how he was able to escape to Mexico so easily after he went on the run a few years later.

And keep in mind at this time, wedding would have been building up his infrastructure. His couriers,

his routes, his stash houses, and his distributors. In every major cocaine market in Canada,

from Quebec City, to Montreal, to Toronto, all the way west to Calgary, Edmonton,

and his hometown of Vancouver, BC. Everything was falling into place for him.

And then, finally, he meets the plug from Scenaloac. It's also likely

that he'd already made contacts with Colombian cartels, as he'd been smuggling in cocaine

from the Atlantic via the Caribbean, which is obviously not a Mexican cartel route.

They don't do maritime smuggling. In 2015, Filipo's Choyados introduced wedding to a sailboat broker

who was planning on bringing in a thousand kilos from the Bahamas to be unloaded

in Newfoundland. Choyados introduced wedding as "the boss." But unbeknownst

to him, the sailboat broker was an undercover federal agent. In April of that year, the RCMP conducted

raids all over Canada as part of a nationwide indictment. They came knocking on Ryan's door,

Somebody had apparently

tipped him off because he

was already gone, banished without a trace. Once again, this guy had dodged a bullet.

His former partner Felipe's Choyados was not so lucky. After serving a two-year prison sentence,

he was gunned down in Montreal in 2018. Nobody was ever arrested for the murder.

We can't be sure, but it's possible that wedding ordered the hit, perhaps believing that

Choyados was working with the police. This would be Ryan Wedding's first 4A into the murder game,

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Thank you. Superpower. So now he's on the run. Probably talked away safely in a gated mansion in

Mexico City and under the protection of the Scenaloa cartel. This is where the networking he'd done

for the past four years across Canada paid off. He had his lutenants, his distributors and his couriers

all lined up. He'd also managed to put together an impressive network of stash houses

throughout the Los Angeles area where his couriers would receive the product after it made it across the border from Tijuana.

Now we just needed the cartel's product and their protection to get it there safely. Now we don't know

for certain what faction of the Scenaloa cartel he was working with the Choppos of the Myos,

but we have a pretty good guess. Back in 2016 when Wedding first got to Mexico, Choppo Guzman

had escaped from prison again and was about to be recaptured and finally extradited

to the United States. So it's unlikely that he ever did business directly with Wedding. But it's highly likely that

his sons did. Remember,

Wedding was first introduced

to Lieutenant from the Choppo faction of the Scenaloa cartel by Philippe Coyados while he was living in Montreal.

So it stands to reason that he stayed in touch and built his own relationship with them.

By 2016 as Choppo fell, his oldest son, Ivana Archivaldo, stepped in and took the business

over from his father. Because the Choppisa at the time ruled in Tijuana and Baja California

at large, we can say with a high degree of probability that they were

the one supplying wedding. So now it's on. Wedding is either fully or partially

funding the Koch ship men's from South America into Mexico using the routes established by the cartel.

We also know that he was personally connected to paramilitary groups and guerrillas

in Colombia who he would source the cocaine from. So this guy

was vertically integrated. This is what made him extra special and extra rich. A lot of

white guys have worked with the cartel. A few have done it side by side with them

in Mexico. Ryan was paying the Mexican price probably

for to $6,000 a kilo and selling them for 25

Or 30

in Canada. Even after the cartel taxes and transport fees,

he's personally clearing close to $20 million

off of each ton that he moves. And he moved up to 60

tons a year. That's 132,000 kilos a year at times.

Let's just say on the low end

to be conservative $18,000 a kilo that's 2 billion

376 million dollars an annual revenue every single

year and he did that for 10 years. Mind blowing this guy

basically single handily dropped the price of cocaine in Canada. That's why he was able to own

a 60 million fleet of motorcycles or pay $12 million for an

ultra-classic James Bond Mercedes. And most importantly,

that was the reason he was able to stay free for so long. $2 billion a year

buys a lot of good will and

Mexico. And to think he managed

all of this from an encrypted phone

along with his right-hand man

and childhood friend Ryan Clark who

relocated to Mexico from Canada in

2022 to help letting run

the business. And there were

these two dudes hard deep

wrought and group saying the

owners of a long-haul trucking company based in Ontario.

These were the smugglers who would dispatch their truck drivers

down to Los Angeles to meet with weddings managers

to collect the cocaine stash it in

secret compartments in the trucks and

drive it back to Canada. The DEA indictments

says one truck could fit up

to 350 kilos at a time

from which wrought and saying

we're paid a flat fee of

$220 dollars. Once the cocaine made it

across the border into Canada it was handed over

to a network of criminal organizations for

the Hell's Angels and a group called the Wolf Pack, which is a loose affiliation of trafficking

clans based out of the Toronto area. And it appears that most of the drug money was being moved around via cryptocurrency. The indictment doesn't say specifically, but I have to assume it's the most expensive coins, Ethereum and Bitcoin. A few of these crypto wallets seized by the government unveil the extent of the wedding enterprise. $250 million sent via cryptocurrency over three months time from just one Canadian trafficking group moving weddings cocaine. That's just one group

doing almost a billion dollars a year. Everyone in weddings orbit was eating. And what's wild about this whole thing is that wedding was operating essentially out in the open for years. The Canadian feds weren't even looking for him. As late as 2024, he and Ryan Clark were spotted at a Starbucks in a trendy neighborhood in Mexico City. It wasn't until the bodies started to pile up that young Ryan came on the radar of the DEA. In 2023, an Indian couple who was visiting their

daughter in Vancouver BC was shot to death inside of her house by a mast to salant. Although the

shooter was never arrested, it's believed that wedding ordered the hit. Turns out that house was

owned by a shady trucking company linked to weddings organization, and whose owner had run off with a load of weddings cocaine in Los Angeles months before the murder. That's right, the dead Indian couple had been victims of mistaken identity. Then there's the case of Randy Fader, a 29-year-old mid-level drug dealer living in Niagara Falls, Ontario. He was outside his house on the evening of April first, 2024, when someone jumped out of an SUV and shot him to death. And this is where things

really begin to unravel for Ryan Wedding and his crew. Two weeks after the murder of Fader, Toronto police pulled over their suspect and found 9mm shell casings, $100,000 in cash and most importantly an encrypted cell phone with the app called Threema, where they discovered all of the text messages discussing the murder of Randy Fader. Inside this Threema chat, the shooter, who identified himself as Mr. Perfect, was taking orders from someone named

Madral Weddle. Turns out, this Mr. Madral Weddle was none other than Ryan Clark. Check this shit out. Clark had flown Mr. Perfect, a 23-year-old kid identified as Malik Cunningham, down to Mexico to do weapons training with some cartelsy cardio's a few months before the murders took place. He was literally grooming this kid to kill. Also inside of the encrypted messages, police not only linked Ryan Clark and Cunningham to two other murders in the Toronto area,

but they found a full-on hit list of everyone who Clark wanted dead. This included, and quote, $200,000 for a realtor in Vancouver, more than twice that amount for some Arab brothers in Toronto and $1 million for a target in Dubai. Wow, this was a huge break for police and all because this dumbass, Mr. Perfect, forgot to delete his texts. So now the feds basically have Ryan Wedding's number 2 man, Ryan Clark, Scott, guilty. In October of 2024, the Mexican Navy arrested Ryan Clark

In the Ritzi Urupa neighborhood of Guadalajara in the state of Haleesco.

to me for two reasons. One, the fact that he was arrested by the Mexican Navy. You see,

in Mexico, the Navy is usually only called out to arrest Narcosusbex if they believe the state

or federal cops have been compromised. Clearly, Wedding and Clark had been paying off almost every level of the police. But secondly, the fact that Clark was in Guadalajara is intriguing. That's the headquarters of the Haleesco New Generation Cartel, bitter rivals of the scene Aloha Cartel. It's possible that he and Wedding were moving product with both organizations, which just goes to show you the depth of their reach and their connections. In March 2025,

Ryan Clark pled not guilty and is currently awaiting trial in Los Angeles.

The million dollar question is, will he flip on his boy Ryan Wedding? If he doesn't,

prosecutors could have a tough time proving that all of these murders were at the behest of Wedding. In which case, Ryan Clark will take the fall and almost certainly be looking at life and prison. And then there's the case of Jonathan Acevedo Garcia, a native Colombian raised in Montreal who Wedding had met while they were both serving Fed time in Texas. Acevedo Garcia was a major trafficker within the Wedding organization, but somehow the DEA got him to flip. He wore a wire

during a meeting with Ryan Wedding and Clark at the Starbucks in Mexico City, where the Fed snapped that now infamous photo of Wedding that circulated all around the world. And thanks to the help of Acevedo Garcia, the DEA was able to put together Operation Giant Slalom,

the investigation where they seized hundreds of kilos of cocaine, $30 million and arrested

most of the key players in Wedding's organization. Acevedo Garcia was set to be a key witness

at the trial of Wedding's associates in May of 2025. The Fed's thought they could use Acevedo as leverage to get Wedding's associates to testify against Wedding once he was finally arrested. Evidently, Acevedo Garcia thought it would be a good idea to cool out and metagene Colombia before the trial. He thought shit was sweet. A damn dog, Colombia hasn't changed that much. On January 31st, 2025, while he was having lunch at the El Indio Mall in Medaging,

a group of cicodios with silences in their pistols ambushed him and shot him dead. As it turns out, Ryan Wedding had posted Acevedo Garcia's photo to a website called thedirtynews.com, a crime blog where criminals converge to share information and that Wedding used to get info about Acevedo's whereabouts as well as to solicit a hitman.

Wow, this is criminal activity in 2026, out in the open on the internet where everyone can see it.

It's almost like they were asking to get caught. Needless to say, pretty much everyone involved in Acevedo Garcia's execution has been arrested. The shooters, the Colombian sex worker, who located him, even the owners of the dirty news website, right before the Fed seized it and shut it down. Canadian authorities also arrested a prominent Ontario criminal defense attorney nicknamed the cocaine lawyer for allegedly advising Wedding about the murder, telling him end quote,

"If you kill this witness, the case will be dismissed." As 2025 dragged on, the dominoes continued

falling around Ryan Wedding. The FBI increased their reward for him to $15 million,

and bug-eyed cash-patel cash. There are no suspects in the Epstein Files Patel, went on national TV and pronounced Wedding the second coming of Pablo Escobar and Chapel Guzman. Then, in response to mounting pressure by the Trump administration, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, whose Morana political party is notoriously tied to the scene-aloha cartel, began extraditing dozens and dozens of cartel leaders to the United States.

The walls were closing in on Ryan Wedding. Everything in Mexico is about appearances, and the fact that the Mexican government couldn't catch a giant six foot three-gringo living in Mexico City when his picture was circulating to millions of people around the world. Well, that made them look a little too complicit. Now, clearly Ryan knew this and began to make arrangements. In early January of 2026, he began posting pictures of himself to a new

Instagram account, photos of him getting on a helicopter of his newly purchased motorcycles. He seemed to be taunting the feds. Then, on January 22nd, Wedding posted a photo of himself in front of a police station in Mexico City, ostensibly turning himself in. In the caption of that photo, he thanked his wife and a man named John Billonog, saying, "He will be in charge of my legacy." He also tagged John's Instagram account. Now, that man's real name is Genety Billonog.

It he is one of the last remaining members of Wedding's crew to be apprehended. It appeared that Wedding was letting all of his contacts and distributors know, "Hey, this guy, John, is taking over

Operations after I'm gone.

being led off the DEA plane in California with media and tow and cash-patel himself participating

in the purplock. And as of this recording, Wedding is currently being held without bond at a federal

jail in Santa Ana, California. Now, here's where it really gets crazy. Two days after his alleged surrender, Wedding's lawyer made a statement to the press debunking these claims, saying that his

client never turned himself in, but that he was captured. The DEA also claims he was captured,

but they're extremely vague and give no detail about how it happened. And then it came out that the Instagram account at Boss Ryan Wedding was actually AI. None of those picks were his. And the photo of him turning himself in was also AI-generated. This is wild. And look, they're going to be so many theories circulating on the internet about what's really going on. And I know whatever I say that comments will disagree with. So let me just offer a few possibilities and you guys

can speculate from there comment below about what you really think is happening. Now, the first possibility is Wedding did turn himself in and he made a deal with the American government in advance to cooperate against his cocaine suppliers, select cartel members. And of course, crooked Mexican politicians. His lawyer claiming he was captured could just be a defense tactic

if and when he goes to trial. Now, the second possibility is he was captured by the DEA,

but without the help of Mexican law enforcement. This would be a huge embarrassment to President Claudia Shainbaum. You see, Mexicans are very territorial, especially when it comes to gringos coming onto their sovereign land and kidnapping or arresting suspects without their knowledge. And obviously, we would be the same way, right? If the shoe were on the other foot. So if they found out about this, it's possible knowing Mexico that they could have created a fake

IG account with all of these wedding photos, right? And then claiming that he turned himself in.

Now, I think that's a little far-fetched creating a whole ass fake IG account, but I definitely

can see Shainbaum and her political party saying we're going to put out the statement that he actually surrendered and not let it leak that, wow, some DEA operatives were able to sneak under the nose of all of our law enforcement, kidnap a guy and get him out of the country without our knowledge. That's a huge political liability. I actually think this has the most legs when it comes to a theory about what really happened. It could also be a combination of both of those things.

Look, the drug game at this level is so intertwined with law enforcement, with politics, with cooperation. It's possible that Ryan Wedding could have been working with the CIA,

the DEA for years. And now he's finally outlived his usefulness.

The scene a lawyer cartel is on its last legs. Most of Choppos kids who took the business over after he went to prison live in the United States now. They ratted on the myos. Their organizations completely falling apart there at war. Maybe Wedding had something to do with their arrest. And now that they're basically the non-superpower, the biggest power is the CJNG. Maybe now it's time for Ryan to go face the music. Who knows? But we can't discount anything because

anything, especially in Mexico, can and will happen. But where do the fake Instagram account come from?

I have an idea. Maybe. Maybe it's Janati or John Billanag himself. Using it as a way to let the underworld know, hey, I'm the new boss now. Nothing stops this train. The product doesn't stop only the face behind it. What do you guys think? You guys, the saga of Ryan Wedding has been one of the most fascinating Narco outlaw stories of the last 20 years. I would say not since Choppos himself has the media and the public at large been so fascinated by a drug trafficker. And what I find

so fascinating beyond just the logistics, the fact that from an encrypted cell phone somewhere in Mexico City, he was able to move cocaine by the ton from jungles in Colombia to Mexico across the border into the United States and then all the way up into Canada. He's moving. That's like 8,000 miles that he's trafficking 60 tons a year of cocaine to. It's absolutely mind blowing. But beyond that is the man himself. It's Ryan Wedding. It's a guy who grew up really as a spoiled kid. This is a guy

who snowboarding teammates say that when they were on the road, when they were teenagers going to

Different events, going to different cities for snowboarding competitions, th...

bed early with his teddy bear. Look it up. The mother fucker had a teddy bear. Yeah. So to go from

competitive athlete and mama's boy spoiled kid to a guy just brazenly out of control murdering

people in furtherance of his billion dollar a year cocaine empire. It's fascinating psychologically.

How do you get to that point? For me, I see it as identity, right? Yes, he's a psychopath. For sure. Like neurologically, he had that in him and it was an environmental factor. Him losing the snowboarding competition, having no identity anymore, especially for an athlete, an athlete who's given their whole childhood to a sport. When that dream just vanishes, it's overnight. You've lost your sense of

identity, your sense of purpose. You don't know where to go. So combined with that and his influence

in the early days, looking at these middle and upper class gangsters, shooting each other in Vancouver BC and seeing them with the gangster lifestyle, the cars, the girls, the clothes. He fell in love with it. But it's just crazy that his family and his community and his friends, he could give a fuck. He said, I am about this life. I am going to ride it out until the end.

And what's so fascinating to see is what will be his sentence? Because I think, you know, even though

Acevedo Garcia, one of the key witnesses for the prosecution is dead. Look, you've got his boy

Ryan Clark, dead derights over text messages, talking and ordering multiple murders. Okay, you have Ryan wedding himself, oftentimes directing cocaine traffic. Not all the time. Towards the end, there's evidence that Ryan Clark was the one kind of putting himself in between wedding and the illicit activities. But there's no doubt that Ryan himself directed much of the drug traffic, especially in the earlier years when he was living in Mexico. So if you know anything about the

feds, if you get five guys on the stand saying, yes, this was the boss, this guy directed me to do it. I moved tons and tons and tons for this guy. It's usually enough. It usually meets the standard

a burden of proof. So at the me the only question, the question is not, is he going to get convicted?

Does he have enough information to make himself useful to law enforcement? Everybody does it, guys. If Chapo and Mayo, the greatest of all time, the greatest to ever do it, if they give up information to the feds, you think Ryan wedding won't? If he doesn't, he goes down in history. He's on the Mount Rushmore of drug traffickers. But I think we're going to see pretty soon that he's going to put his hand up and play ball. So we're going to tap in. We're going

to pay attention to this case. As it continues, as it moves forward, we're in the very early stages. I mean, he just got arrested last month. So this is going to be a year and a half, two, two year, maybe longer process. But this is a movie. This is a TV series. I hope you guys have enjoyed it. We'll tap in with you next week. My name is Johnny Mitchell. Thank you for watching the Connect. (upbeat music)

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