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Longtime fugitive Ryan Wedding sought a court order to prevent his arrest in Mexico’s Sinaloa state nearly a year before he was finally taken into U.S. custody last week, according to legal records obtained by CBC News.
The documents, first reported by Sinaloan news organization Riodoce, suggest that Wedding — a Canadian who is accused of leading a cocaine-smuggling network linked to the Sinaloa cartel — believed that Mexican authorities were closing in on him in early 2025.
In a Mexican federal court filing in mid-February, Wedding claimed under oath that state law enforcement had obtained a warrant seeking his arrest and extradition. He said at the time he was living in Los Mochis, a coastal city in the western state of Sinaloa.
The filing came just days after the FBI’s manhunt for Wedding ramped up, following the assassination of a witness who had been set to testify against him.
Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, a longtime drug trafficker who was born in Montreal, was shot by a hit squad in Medellin, Colombia, on Jan. 31, after Wedding allegedly placed a $5 million US bounty on his head.
Wedding, 44, was taken into U.S. custody in Mexico last week and immediately flown to California, where he faces 17 federal charges, including murder, drug trafficking, witness tampering and money laundering. He has pleaded not guilty.
CBC News has reviewed a Nov. 4, 2025, ruling by a federal judge in Sinaloa, who stated he had no jurisdiction over Wedding’s request for an injunction — known as an amparo — because the underlying arrest warrant had been issued in Mexico City.
The partially-redacted ruling seen by CBC does not name Wedding and leaves out his home address in Los Mochis. However, a Mexican court docket lists the plaintiff in the case by his full name, Ryan James Wedding.
His California-based defence lawyer Anthony Colombo told CBC News in an email that he was aware of the 2025 court case. “The use of an amparo is common in Mexico to suppress an arrest warrant that was issued,” Colombo said.
The Mexican judge’s decision says Sinaloa’s public safety director first acknowledged having sought the arrest warrant, but later denied that he’d done so.
“He initially accepted [the claim] because if he found or ran into the plaintiff during his functions, he would detain him, but clarified that he does not hold the claimed detention order for extradition purposes,” District Judge Jesús Adalberto Bañuelos Flores wrote.
Cartel expert Nathan P. Jones said in an interview that it’s “a classic narco strategy” to use the Mexican legal system to slow down court proceedings.
Jones, an associate professor of security studies at Sam Houston State University in Texas, said it’s unlikely Wedding was living at the address he provided.
Olympic snowboarder turned accused drug kingpin Ryan Wedding pleaded not guilty to multiple charges against him during his first court appearance in Santa Ana, Calif., while uncertainty surrounds how Wedding ended up in police custody.
‘Living’ in Mexico under cartel protection
The FBI added Wedding to its list of 10 most-wanted fugitives last March. The agency’s director Kash Patel described Wedding this week as “the largest narco trafficker in modern times” and compared him to the likes of notorious drug lords Pablo Escobar and Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzmán Loera.
The FBI said the former Olympic snowboarder was protected by the Sinaloa cartel, co-founded by El Chapo.
While reporting from Sinaloa last month, CBC’s Jorge Barrera was told by Mexico’s national guard in the state that Wedding was not on their radar.
A Mexican security expert later told Barrera that Wedding was specifically tied to Los Chapitos, the faction of the cartel still controlled by those loyal to El Chapo’s sons.
The RCMP first sought Wedding’s arrest in Montreal amid an investigation into large-scale cocaine imports to Canada in 2015. U.S. authorities now say the Thunder Bay, Ont., native had been hiding out in Mexico since around that time.
Colombo denied his client had spent a decade in hiding.
“I’d characterize it as ‘living’ [in Mexico],” Colombo told reporters this week following his client’s arraignment. “The government can characterize it their way.”
The FBI and the Sinaloa attorney general’s office did not immediately return requests for comment on Wedding’s 2025 injunction request.
Mexican Attorney General Ernestina Godoy Ramos said in a statement this week that Wedding was a “top-tier logistics operator” linked to the Sinaloa cartel, and served “as a key bridge for the mass distribution of drugs in North America.”
The Los Angeles Police Department previously said Wedding’s network used stash houses in the area to move 60 tonnes each of cocaine and fentanyl a year to other destinations in the U.S. and Canada.
The RCMP said Wedding’s arrest last week marked a “significant day for public safety in Canada.”
