SANTA ANA, Calif. — A former Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned prime FBI fugitive is anticipated to seem in federal court docket Monday on fees he allegedly ran a billion-dollar multinational drug trafficking ring and orchestrating a number of killings.
Ryan Marriage ceremony, 44, turned himself in on the U.S. Embassy in Mexico Metropolis final week and was flown to Southern California after a yearlong effort by authorities in the USA, Mexico, Canada, Colombia and the Dominican Republic to arrest him.
Marriage ceremony is scheduled to make an preliminary look in federal court docket in Santa Ana, California. No legal professional was listed for him on the court docket docket Monday morning.
U.S. authorities imagine the previous Olympian, who competed in a single occasion for his dwelling nation within the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, had been hiding in Mexico for greater than a decade. He was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives listing final March when authorities provided a $15 million reward for info resulting in his arrest and conviction.
Authorities say Marriage ceremony moved as a lot as 60 tons of cocaine between Colombia, Mexico, Canada and Southern California and imagine he was working below the safety of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug rings.
He was indicted in 2024 on federal fees of operating a felony enterprise, homicide, conspiring to distribute cocaine and different crimes.
The homicide fees accuse Marriage ceremony of directing the 2023 killings of two members of a Canadian household in retaliation for a stolen drug cargo, and for ordering a killing over a drug debt in 2024. Final 12 months, Marriage ceremony was indicted on new fees of orchestrating the killing of a witness in Colombia to assist him keep away from extradition to the U.S.
Marriage ceremony was beforehand convicted within the U.S. of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and sentenced to jail in 2010. On-line data present he was launched from Bureau of Prisons custody in 2011.
In Canada, Marriage ceremony faces separate drug fees courting again to 2015.
The 2024 indictment says Marriage ceremony ran a billion-dollar drug trafficking group that was the biggest provider of cocaine to Canada. The group obtained cocaine from Colombia and labored with Mexican cartels to maneuver medicine by boat and aircraft to Mexico after which into the U.S. utilizing semitrucks, the indictment mentioned. It mentioned the group saved cocaine in Southern California earlier than sending it to Canada and different U.S. states.
