Law-enforcement officials said in November that there were nine people from Canada they had either arrested or were looking for as part of a larger investigation into Ryan Wedding, the former Canadian snowboarder who is accused of running a violent international drug-trafficking operation.
Many of the new details released in court documents on Wednesday relate to the alleged murder of Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, a witness in Colombia.
Who is Ryan Wedding, the former Canadian Olympic snowboarder on the FBI’s Most Wanted list?
Here is what we know about the people in Canada who were swept up in the latest round of charges and allegations, none of which have been tested in court.
Former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding’s alleged drug trafficking organization
An organizational chart prepared by U.S. law enforcement agencies showing what prosecutors allege is an international criminal network responsible for drug trafficking and violence in Canada, the United States, Mexico and elsewhere.
Alleged human
connections
Alleged business
connections
Protector
Owner / director
Attorney
Associated with
Relationship
Money laundering
Ryan Wedding
RELATIONSHIP
Miryam Andrea
Castillo Moreno
(Wife)
Carmen Yelinet
Valoyes Florez
(Madam)
Daniela Alejandra
Acuna Macias
(Girlfriend)
PROTECTOR
ATTORNEY
Edgar Aaron
Vazquez Alvarado
(’The General’)
Deepak
Balwant
Paradkar
VRG Energeticos
S.A. de C.V.
Grupo RVG
Combustibles
S.A. de C.V.
Grupo Ares
Imperial S.
de R.L. de C.V.
MONEY LAUNDERING
Rolan
Sokolovski
Gianluca
Tiepolo
John Anthony
Fallon
2351885
Ontario
Inc. d.b.a.
Diamond Tsar
Stile Italiano
S.R.L.
LMJ Trading
Ltd.
Windrose
Tactical
S.R.L.S.
Made in
Italy Motor
-cycles Ltd.
TMR Ltd.
Cristian
Diana
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
Former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding’s alleged drug trafficking organization
An organizational chart prepared by U.S. law enforcement agencies showing what prosecutors allege is an international criminal network responsible for drug trafficking and violence in Canada, the United States, Mexico and elsewhere.
Alleged human
connections
Alleged business
connections
Relationship
Owner / director
Protector
Associated with
Attorney
Money laundering
Ryan Wedding
RELATIONSHIP
Miryam Andrea
Castillo Moreno
(Wife)
Daniela Alejandra
Acuna Macias
(Girlfriend)
Carmen Yelinet
Valoyes Florez
(Madam)
PROTECTOR
ATTORNEY
Edgar Aaron
Vazquez Alvarado
(’The General’)
Deepak
Balwant
Paradkar
VRG Energeticos
S.A. de C.V.
Grupo RVG
Combustibles
S.A. de C.V.
Grupo Ares
Imperial S.
de R.L. de C.V.
MONEY LAUNDERING
Rolan
Sokolovski
Gianluca
Tiepolo
John Anthony
Fallon
2351885
Ontario
Inc. d.b.a.
Diamond Tsar
Stile Italiano
S.R.L.
LMJ Trading
Ltd.
Windrose
Tactical
S.R.L.S.
Made in
Italy Motor
-cycles Ltd.
TMR Ltd.
Cristian
Diana
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
Former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding’s alleged drug trafficking organization
An organizational chart prepared by U.S. law enforcement agencies showing what prosecutors allege is an international criminal network responsible for drug trafficking and violence in Canada, the United States, Mexico and elsewhere.
Alleged human
connections
Alleged business
connections
Protector
Owner / director
Attorney
Associated with
Relationship
Money
laundering
Ryan Wedding
PROTECTOR
ATTORNEY
RELATIONSHIP
MONEY LAUNDERING
Edgar Aaron Vazquez Alvarado
(’The General’)
Deepak Balwant Paradkar
Miryam Andrea Castillo Moreno
(Wife)
Rolan
Sokolovski
Gianluca
Tiepolo
John Anthony
Fallon
VRG Energeticos
S.A. de C.V.
2351885
Ontario
Inc. d.b.a.
Diamond Tsar
Stile Italiano
S.R.L.
LMJ Trading
Ltd.
Daniela Alejandra Acuna Macias
(Girlfriend)
Grupo RVG
Combustibles
S.A. de C.V.
Windrose
Tactical
S.R.L.S.
Made in
Italy Motor
-cycles Ltd.
Grupo Ares
Imperial S.
de R.L. de C.V.
TMR Ltd.
Carmen Yelinet Valoyes Florez
(Madam)
Cristian
Diana
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
Arrested in connection with Ryan Wedding’s alleged criminal network
Deepak Balwant Paradkar, 62, has made a career as a flashy, brash defence lawyer who is known for showing off his money, his pricey shoes and keeping accused drug dealers out of jail.
Authorities in the United States allege that his representation of Mr. Wedding crossed over into criminality, accusing Mr. Paradkar of multiple offences, including advising Mr. Wedding to kill a key witness who was set to testify against the alleged drug trafficker.
Deepak Balwant ParadkarDave Chidley/The Canadian Press
The son of an ordained Presbyterian minister, Mr. Paradkar has long embraced the infamy of representing notorious clients, including serial killer Dellen Millard. Until he was reprimanded in 2017 by the Law Society of Ontario, the Mississauga lawyer used the Instagram handle “Cocaine_lawyer” and boasted about clients who beat drug charges. He has a well-known taste for luxury cars, and has described trials as warfare.
“People with money hire me because I don’t do legal aid,” he once said.
Mr. Paradkar is facing extradition to the U.S. over the charges against him. In December he was granted bail in Ontario Superior Court. Justice Peter Bawden said his decision to grant bail is not a reflection of the overall case. He said the case for extradition is strong, noting that Mr. Paradkar is alleged to have been living a double life by working as a “senior operative within a violent transnational drug trafficking organization.”
However, the judge also ruled that Mr. Paradkar’s life could be in jeopardy if he continued to be held in jail.
The lawyer has diabetes and cardiac conditions, the judge said, and he could be at further risk owing to the Wedding organization’s reputation for allegedly unleashing violence against suspected members who get caught.
Rolan Sokolovski, a Toronto jeweller who owns a store called Diamond Tsar, is a Lithuanian Canadian accused of being a chief money launderer for the Wedding organization.
Court documents allege that the man acted at the wider group’s behest to buy luxury cars and manage cryptocurrency. More significantly, he is alleged to have paid a hired assassin in jewels, days after the crime gang allegedly orchestrated a hit in Colombia.
“On or after January 31, 2025, defendant Sokolovski made a bejeweled necklace for [a Montreal co-accused] as a reward for his role in Victim A’s murder,” allege the charge sheets filed in the Central District of California.
An FBI poster shows former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding, a fugitive charged with allegedly running and participating in a transnational drug trafficking operation.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Charging documents filed in Toronto and Los Angeles accuse Mr. Sokolovski of overseeing bookkeeping for Mr. Wedding’s criminal enterprise and of laundering funds through his numbered corporation in Ontario.
According to court documents, authorities say they have investigated tens of millions of dollars moving through cryptocurrency accounts associated with Mr. Sokolovski.
U.S., Canadian authorities announce new arrests in efforts to prosecute fugitive Ryan Wedding
Earlier this year, Mr. Sokolovski’s numbered company launched a civil suit against a crypto platform that he claimed was extorting him. The filings say Mr. Sokolovski sold a Richard Mille watch for three bitcoin, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but when he tried to use an unauthorized cryptocurrency exchange to cash in the funds, he was told they’d been frozen.
Mr. Sokolovski’s court filings say he was unaware that the platform he used “from time to time” to facilitate crypto exchanges with his business was banned by Ontario regulators.
Mr. Sokolovski remains in custody. A decision on his bail application is expected in February, with Crown prosecutors telling a Toronto courtroom he could be targeted by the Wedding criminal enterprise if he were to be released.
During the final day of his bail hearing in Toronto, Crown lawyer Heather Graham told the court that he allegedly controlled cryptocurrency accounts through which he moved hundreds of millions of dollars. She said he cannot be safely released from jail because he is alleged to have unique knowledge of the inner workings of the Wedding organization’s financial structure and cryptocurrency accounts.
“They’re not going to let that sit there,” Ms. Graham said of Mr. Wedding and his alleged associates. “I think Your Honour can presume they are going to hope to be able to use him to gain access to that money again.”
Atna Onha, 40, faces a series of charges including conspiracy to commit murder in connection with a criminal enterprise, conspiracy to retaliate against a witness and conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
Mr. Onha, who also went by “Tupac” and “Kim Jong-un,” is described in court documents as a Montreal-area “hitman” for the Wedding organization. He is alleged to have texted an informant, Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, to confirm that he was in fact working with the FBI, which Mr. Acebedo-Garcia confirmed. Mr. Onha later employed a co-conspirator to find out details about the informant’s girlfriend, court documents allege.
For his role in the alleged hit on Mr. Acebedo-Garcia, he was allegedly paid 30 kilograms of cocaine and $150,000, according to a request for his arrest made by U.S. authorities and filed in Quebec Superior Court in November.
Who is Ryan Wedding, the former Canadian Olympic snowboarder on the FBI’s Most Wanted list?
Gursewak Singh Bal, a 31-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., is the founder and operator of a Canadian crime website called the Dirty News, according to police.
Mr. Bal allegedly helped other conspiracy members locate and kill the witness, identified in Montreal court documents as Mr. Acebedo-Garcia, by posting a photo of him on Instagram with text saying the man had “single-handedly” ratted out “one of the strongest underworld networks” the world had seen. “Good chance he’ll never be found again,” Mr. Bal posted on Nov. 5, 2024, according to the U.S. indictment.
In addition, authorities say Mr. Bal posted a screenshot of text messages from Allistair Chapman, an associate of Mr. Wedding, seeking Mr. Acebedo-Garcia’s location for the purposes of killing him.
The court documents say Mr. Bal accepted $10,000 from Mr. Chapman in October, 2024. The money was for agreeing not to post about Mr. Wedding’s indictment on his website and instead publicize information about Mr. Acebedo-Garcia so that he could be found and killed.
Readers see this image from U.S. and Canadian authorities when they visit the website of The Dirty News.Supplied
An undercover Mountie met with Mr. Bal starting in August, 2024, and he bragged to the officer that he worked for “really serious people … even snowboarder,” adding that “these guys paid us for help,” according to Canadian court documents.
The Dirty News site now features a message saying: “This website has been seized” by law enforcement as part of Operation Giant Slalom.
According to archived webpages, the site’s mission was to provide readers “breaking news and information relating to Canadian gangs, their inner workings and so much more.”
Allistair Chapman, a 33-year-old from Calgary, is a member and associate of the Wedding criminal enterprise, according to the indictment.
Mr. Chapman allegedly gave $10,000 to Mr. Bal, the Dirty News website operator.
Mr. Chapman began working for Mr. Wedding in late 2021 or early 2022, according to Canadian court documents. An associate of Mr. Wedding who provided evidence to U.S. law enforcement searched Mr. Chapman’s name and came across a Canadian news article from March, 2018, detailing Mr. Chapman’s alleged drug-trafficking activities. Mr. Chapman confirmed the article was about him, the documents say.
Mr. Chapman, who is a former junior hockey player, allegedly led a Calgary-based organized-crime group that trafficked drugs in Alberta, British Columbia and the U.S., according to a 2018 press release from the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams, known as ALERT.
Mr. Chapman and several associates were arrested and charged in 2018 for drug and trafficking offences after a year-long investigation.
However, the charges against Mr. Chapman were stayed in 2020 because his Charter right to a speedy trial was violated, according to a Postmedia News report.
Edwin Basora-Hernandez appears to have been swept up in the alleged conspiracy by chance. Court documents claim that members of the Wedding organization saw a photo of the Montreal-based DJ in a music video alongside Mr. Acebedo-Garcia, prompting them to seek him out.
At that point, authorities allege, Mr. Onha enlisted another member of the organization to meet Mr. Basora-Hernandez and ask him for the alleged government witness’s contact information, which he provided – both e-mail address and phone number. He said he did not know Mr. Acebedo-Garcia well but did owe him money.
When the RCMP interviewed Mr. Basora-Hernandez about this encounter, he acknowledged that he had known he was speaking to a member of a criminal organization. He later relayed the fact that he was in contact with the RCMP to his Wedding organization handler, which led to a meeting with Mr. Wedding himself, along with his lawyer Mr. Paradkar, where they paid the DJ $1,000 for providing the contact information of Mr. Acebedo-Garcia, according to court documents.
Ahmad Nabil Zitoun, a 35-year-old from Edmonton, is a member and associate of Wedding’s alleged criminal enterprise who unsuccessfully tried to locate Mr. Acebedo-Garcia in Medellín, Columbia, and Mecca, Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. indictment.
Mr. Zitoun was hired to find Mr. Acebedo-Garcia in January, 2025, by Andrew Clark, Mr. Wedding’s second-in-command, for $10,000 plus expenses, the document alleges. He received about $40,000, investigators say.
He declined a contract to kill the man, the indictment says.
Canadian court documents say that Mr. Zitoun has “conducted acts of violence and drug-trafficking activities for the WEDDING organization.”
Edmonton lawyer Anwar Jarrah said Mr. Zitoun will be fighting the charges.
“He will be disputing the extradition application,” Mr. Jarrah told The Globe and Mail.
The next court appearance is scheduled for Friday.
Rasheed Pascua Hossain, 32, of Vancouver was arrested after being charged with conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute cocaine, conspiracy to export cocaine, and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments.
He is alleged to have managed and laundered the proceeds from Mr. Wedding’s drug trafficking, including through the use of the cryptocurrency Tether. His aliases include “JP Morgan.”
A spokesperson for B.C. RCMP could not confirm whether Mr. Hossain was arrested in the province.
Mr. Hossain was granted bail at a hearing in Vancouver in mid-December, under the condition that he enter house arrest at his home in Calgary. He must wear an ankle monitor and abide by a number of conditions such as not possessing a cellphone. He must also surrender his passport, not open any bank or crypto accounts and not communicate with any of his co-accused, the justice ruled.
Wanted in connection with Ryan Wedding’s alleged criminal network
Tommy Demorizi, 35, is believed to be a fugitive currently in the Dominican Republic, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday. He was the Wedding organization member who met Mr. Basora-Hernandez and solicited the informant’s contact details, court documents allege.
A Montreal resident, he was arrested near Dryden, Ont., in 2020 with a large quantity of Canadian cash in his car, and charged with laundering the proceeds of crime and trafficking in property obtained by crime, according to media reports at the time.
With a report from The Canadian Press