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November 20th, 2023, in Ontario, Canada. A middle-aged couple from India are visiting their children, who live together in a rented home in a Toronto suburb. It's been a few months, and the trip is winding down. The son's at work, and the daughter is downstairs in the house with her parents. Perfectly normal night. That is, until a gunman bursts into the house. This is no random robbery, though. It's a hit. One designed to send a message. The shooter lights the house up,
firing dozens of shots. The older couple are each hit by at least 20 bullets, killing them both. The daughter is shot 13 times, but somehow she's going to survive. My father was shot in front of me, she tells the CBC from her hospital bed. I heard my mother's last screams.
After that, there was complete silence. Only the noises of gunshots. A tenant who lives downstairs is able to see a man rushing out the door and jumping into a waiting Ford F-150. But that's all the police get for months. In fact, to this day, they still don't know who the shooter is. But after a few months, they do know the motivation. A missing shipment of coke stolen in Southern California.
Only thing is, it's a case of mistaken identity. The murdered couple had nothing to do with it. Fast forward a couple of months later to April 1st, 2024 in Niagara Falls, Canada, just across the border from the US. For weeks, a 23-year-old hitman who goes by Mr. Perfect has been texting on an encrypted app with a high-level narco in Mexico who goes by Mero Wero. Mr. Perfect is fresh out of prison and looking to put in some work.
In fact, he's only been out a month, but he's already been flown to Mexico for five days of military training that cost $100,000, all paid for by Maruero. While there, Mr. Perfect texts Maruero, "I am what you now call ELITE thanks to you, brother." Elite is in all caps. And he better be, because Maruero has a list of people he needs checked off, including, quote, "a realtor and van for $200,000,
Some Arabs worth a couple hundo each. A Mexie who owned a restaurant and his wife. Someone nicknamed Honcho for $150,000. Someone named Donnie for $300,000. And a person in Dubai for $1 million US dollars.
He texts Mr. Perfect that he stands to earn, quote, a nice 1.5 mil this year if we keep knocking him out the park quick. At one point, the hitman texts him, give me the easiest one first. The response? Maybe the Niagara Falls ginger, lol. Adding he'll pay 100k in cover expenses and that Mr. Perfect should drive over from Toronto and, quote, blow his top off, which April 1st, he does.
Dressed in black, he fires a single shot into the head of a 29-year-old man believed to be involved in international drug trafficking, then escapes in a white Audi before ditching that car for a green Ford Explorer. Unfortunately for Mr. Perfect, he's also Mr. Sloppy, and CCTV picks the whole thing up. Two weeks later, local cops pull over the Ford Explorer on a routine traffic stop before being informed that it might be a murder suspect.
They find a whole lot of cash, some ammo, and a white iPhone on him, which contains the messages he exchanged with the narco, which Mr. Perfect had not yet deleted, which I mean, Gen Z, you know, you can't trust them to do any job right.
And it turns out that killing in Niagara, it's connected to the killings in Toronto, the Indian couple. In fact, the same guy ordered them both and a few others too. His name isn't Maruwero. It's Andrew the Dictator Clark, a 34-year-old Canadian who only a few years earlier was an elevator mechanic.
and he's the second in command of a billion-dollar drug cartel with a leader who has an even stranger background, an Olympian snowboarder from the Vancouver area known as Ryan Wedding.
And this story has everything. The Sinaloa cartel, ex-KGB traffickers undercover, shady Hezbollah-linked financiers, DJ Khaled's mansion in Miami, a broad daylight witness murdered in Medellin, and a whole bunch of coke, fent, meth, and murder. This is The Underworld Podcast. ♪♪
Welcome back to the audio and now visual experience known as the Underworld Podcast, where two journalists, myself, Danny Gold, and my co-host, Sean Williams, bring you a new story of international organized crime every single week. We trade off hosting duties. We share some laughs. We learn things about Sean's domestic life against our will. We have fun here.
I mean, in fairness, I do think the listeners want to know what I can bench, but, um, I mean, I guess we can do that as a bonus. There have been a couple of comments about you being a chat, like specifically that word. So tell us, I mean, how much, how much can you bench? Oh man. Uh,
Oh, it's going to be in kilos. You wouldn't know. Yeah, we've seen a lot of comments too with the fashion critiques. A lot of mean things said about Sean's eyebrows. But look, we're in the video game. Thanks to our pals at Spotify who graciously let us use their studio. So, you know, we're here to stay for right now.
No, they look good, dude. Don't worry about it. As always, bonus episodes at patreon.com slash underworldpodcast. You can sign up here on iTunes or Spotify. Merch at underworldpod.com. Email us at theunderworldpodcast at gmail for whatever you want.
No, are you sure? Like, what's going on? No, no, no. They look good, dude. I was just... Just jokes. Also, you know, the trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 just came out. We need to... If you can get our podcast as one of those radio stations, we need to make that happen. It's the perfect fit. I've never... I mean, peanut butter and jelly, man. Come on. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, now let's have some fun, gentlemen. And I guess the, you know, seven ladies that listen to us.
Ryan Wedding, just a real renaissance man, right? He could snowboard really well, and he also sells drugs really well. Writes LA Magazine, quote, Wedding ran a $1 billion drug empire along with a motley coterie of criminal compatriots. Among them, Naheem Jorge Bonilla, a music executive whose preferred nickname was The One, and whom investigators believe was negotiating drug deals as the owner of the Miami Beach hotspot Mandrake.
an Indian trucking magnate, a Toronto hitman, Russian mobsters, and Wedding's childhood buddy Andrew Clark, the Olympian second in command known by his alias "The Dictator."
I mean, this episode, there's a lot of reporting on the story when it dropped. And I used a whole bunch of it, but both the CBC and the Toronto Star have done some fantastic stuff. There's a good piece in Rolling Stone where the guy actually started reporting on a wedding in 2009 for a piece that never ran back then. He had actually been popped on a much smaller federal drug trafficking charge back then, which is why this guy started reporting on it. That was in San Diego in 2008. There's also a few good pieces in LA Magazine as he's getting charged in the California courts.
Wait, so the guy had to stop reporting because there was court restrictions? I don't know. I don't know how it works in the States or in Canada. No, no, no. No, no. He didn't stop. I think he started. That's true. You do have a multi-million. How much? How many million dollars? A hundred. A hundred million. What's going on with that lawsuit? I can't say. You can't say. Does it have to do with, you know, maybe like a diddy party or something? Or is it related to your reporting?
It's related to my report, unfortunately. They haven't got me on the other stuff. No, what happened was the guy, I believe he reported it out in 2009 when this was happening, but from the looks of things, probably couldn't sell the story or it wasn't working out. So he, I guess, shelved it and then this thing happens where this guy becomes a huge international story and he picked it back up. Good for him. Yeah, it is. I like when that works out that way.
Okay, Ryan Wedding, if you look at a picture of the guy, well, one of the ones that's circulated, he actually looks like the actor Diederik Bader. I don't know if you guys know who he is, but he's the guy, specifically, I think he was on the Drew Carey show, but he's also the next door neighbor in Office Space, which is when he looks exact, you know, I'm talking like long hair, kind of receding hairline, mustache. I mean, I'm serious. It's uncanny. The guy, the two chicks are the same time guy, you know?
office space? Yeah, sure. Jesus. No. But also he's 240 pounds. He's six foot three. He's an athlete, right? And he's someone who is physically imposing. He's born in 1981 and he grows up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, which is just northeast of the eastern edge of Minnesota on Lake Superior. It's a working class town, sort of Canadian wilderness folk. You know the vibes. Yeah, I don't, but I can guess it is like the same as Oklahoma roughneck vibes, right?
I mean, I think it's a little more less hostile, you know, like, and more flannel. Okay. Good at, like, you know, camping a lot and snowmobiling. I don't know if you've watched Shore Z or Larry Kenny. If you haven't, you really should, but sort of like that, you know? Okay. Yeah, Bon Iver. That's what I'm thinking. He's a real outdoor kid for sure, you know, but his dad's an engineer, and he gets good with computers, and he's actually into it. His family is also big in competitive skiing. Here's LA Magazine's Michelle McPhee, quote,
His father, Rene, was a sought-after engineer proficient in several languages. His mother, Karen, was a nurse. Wedding, along with his two sisters, grew up speaking French and English. The natural-born athlete had always leaned into adventure sports, motocross, dirt biking, rugby, but it was snowboarding in which Wedding excelled. His grandparents owned Thunder Bay's Mount Baldy ski resort, and it was here that Wedding learned to shred, embarking on a career path as a competitive snowboarder.
When he's 12, his family moves to Vancouver, where the famous Whistler Ski Mountain is, and Wedding gets super into snowboarding, winning a big race when he's 12. Coaches describe him as fearless, which, you know, foreshadowing.
So another thing Vancouver gets famous for in the 90s, right when Wedding moves there, is gangs, but not just any sort of gangs. These gangs are kind of like middle class kids, usually hybrid, multi-ethnic gangs, who made huge amounts of money in the drug game, in no small part because of Vancouver's lax enforcement and just sort of like,
You know, it was a major trafficking center and still is. We have an old episode, I think, on one of those gangsters from nearby. It's a town called Surrey, which I think is south of Vancouver. Bindi Joe Hall, which is, you know, a fantastic episode. But you've got young, impressionable Ryan Wedding, and he is coming of age, like, right at this time when all these guys would be all over the place. At 15, he's good enough to make the national team, and he's traveling around the world, probably just, you know,
you know, having a great time just being a young snowboarder surfer, you know, getting paid to live the life like what a, what a dream he is. He's legit, though, you know, he's he's preparing for the Olympics, but it's not the easiest life. Lots of training, hard work, all that stuff.
In 1999, he wins bronze at the Junior World Championship, and then in 2001, a silver in the Junior World Championships. Alright, I mean that's pretty good, but did he have one of those jester hats? You know, that's the first thing I think of when I think of snowboarding, because I know almost nothing about it. I mean that and cool borders, which was amazing on the PS1. Also, shout out to rugby being considered an adventure sport, I like that.
You know, I assume if he was snowboarding in the late 2000s, or late 90s, early 2000s, he definitely did have one of those hats he wore down the mountain on, like, special days, you know? Just kind of, it was the vibe. In 2002, he makes the Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. He's in competition for the Giant Slalom, his family and friends cheering him on, but he ends up getting 24th place, which, I mean, 24th place? Like, are you really, you're really considered an Olympian if you get 24th? Sean, you could probably get 24th place. I mean...
Yeah, 34. Yeah, I mean, I'm just kind of kidding. Being in the Olympics is an insane accomplishment unless it's curling, which, you know, you could just kind of show up, I feel like, in that. Like, just train for like a year and just kind of make it happen. But you know what I like? I like the one... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I can't have this. This is anti-curling propaganda. This is a 500-year-old sport.
You got like a massive lump of granite and you're basically playing crown bowls. This is... That's awesome. That's just awesome. I can't have this. Yeah, I like the one where they cross-country ski and then shoot and then ski again.
I don't know what that's called, but it's pretty sick. Anyway. The Finnish Army? Yeah. The Olympics end with his dismal finish, and you couldn't just become a snowboarder influencer then or whatever. You know, he needs to get a real job, so he enrolls at a local college. He has some real career plans, and as a side gig, he takes a job as a bouncer at a club where there's some wild violence.
The Vancouver gang scene we've talked about in previous episodes, it's getting wild, you know, shootings, brawls, all that, in the nightclubs. The young upstart gangs that had spiraled off from Beanie Joe Hall and his rivals like the United Nations, Red Scorpions, Bacon Brothers, it's really kicking off as they fight for control of the drug market, moving pounds of weed and then later coke. There's also heavy Asian organized crime, the Hells Angels are involved, it's all that sort of stuff. And Wedding is around all of this.
He sees the flash, he sees the money, he sees the game, and he sees that it's kids who kind of grew up like he did, you know, that are sort of like him that are in on it. And in Canada, well, I mean, Vancouver, there's just so much weed, a lot of coke starting to move through. It's not hard to get involved. And get involved, he does. He's already working in the nightlife scene, and I imagine as an Olympian snowboarder and a big dude in Canada, people dug that. So he starts getting the connects that he needs.
He's making money, he's buying designer clothes, you know, motorcycles, beamers, the Ducati, the new condos. He drops out of college. He's actually growing weed at this point, setting up big houses, grow houses.
We're talking mid-2000s here, he's making bank. And according to the article in Rolling Stone, he's being watched by the cops at this point and is rumored to run a grow-op with 8,000 plants in a big hidden warehouse. But in 2006, that op gets raided with an estimated $10 million of product confiscated. Wedding seems to have been pretty careful though, enough so that the cops don't really have much on him and he avoids charges. 10 mil, that has escalated pretty quickly, wow.
So, I mean, this is the next episode I'm working on, but apparently, you know, if you have the gumption or the hubris, it's not that hard to set up a grow house where you really make millions and millions of dollars. But I've got a really interesting one that we're cooking up thanks to a listener who tipped me off on something that'll come in a couple weeks. That sounds incredible. Yeah, we should tee that up because you've been talking about that all week and I really want to know more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mean like tee it up right now? Like mention it?
Should we do a trailer right now? No, I don't know. I think we're good. Keep a little bit of suspense going, you know? Anyway, wedding obviously has money issues now, which is what happens when you lose that much product. He does a couple of bad deals too, so he really needs to hit a lick. And in 2007, he's hanging out with a shady Iranian dude said to have some Hezbollah connections, Hassan Sharani, who had been in the game for a while and is reputed to be a money launderer heavy.
The two of them get involved with a reputed Russian mobster who owns a radio station in Vancouver. And the three of them are setting up a coke deal in LA for 24 keys, which is not a small amount. I mean, if you're paying LeBron, that's $552,000. Now, the guy on the other side of the deal just happens to be a former KGB agent. Seriously.
We're in 2008 now, the partners, they go to LA, and according to testimony, Wedding seems like he might be in way over his head. When they touch down in LAX, you know, with their dreams and their cardigans, the former KGB guy is there, and he demands the money right away, but like, of course, they don't have it. They just flew in. They tell the KGB guy, look,
We'll buy one kilo from you. If it checks out, we're going to grab the other 23. Did you just write the show so you get the IP for an option deal? Because this is getting pretty insane and we're what, like a third through or something? So the Rolling Stone guy, I believe, sold the IP and they're turning it into, I think, a doc series or a fiction series. So we're, you know, he did all the hard work. This is always happening to better people. More power to him. I mean, come on, you know. Now, another report says Wedding wasn't stressing.
Writes Rolling Stone, quote, but Wedding didn't appear nervous, the agent says. He acted like he was on vacation. He and Sharani slept in, ate breakfast at Denny's, and smoked at hookah lounges late into the night. When they had downtime, Wedding flipped through real estate magazines, mulling over the possibility of buying property in Southern California. There's just one little issue with the whole situation. The former KGB guy, the one selling the keys to them, he's wired up. He's an informant for the feds.
And when things are about to proceed to the big purchase, they raid the hotel room and Ryan Wedding and his partners go down hard. Wait, so the guy was, he was actually ex-KGB, but he was also an informant? Or was the whole thing just a ruse? He's ex-KGB and an informant. I don't know what his background is, but I'd really like to. I couldn't find more on it. Maybe he got busted for being involved or something like that. You know, a lot of these intel guys go into...
get into the game after afterwards. So I don't know, but it's, I mean, it's kind of, you know, amazing, amazing little bit part. And you got to wonder too, if this is like the first big Coke deal these guys are doing or only the first big deal we know about. But either way, Sharani and the Russian, they take pleas 18 and 30 months. Sharani actually flips and testifies, but Wedding refuses. He won't cooperate.
He ends up going to trial and getting convicted, and it's a mandatory minimum of 10 years, though he figures he'll probably get transferred to Canada and get it reduced because, you know, there are no laws in Canada. And in May of 2010, he does get it reduced to four years, and he's already served two at that point.
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Take your vibes on Google.
Google is a trademark of Google LLC. In prison, Wedding is hitting the gym hard, getting seriously big and imposing. He's not intimidated. He also has a number of various girlfriends visiting him, one even flashing him in the visiting room that causes a stir. He eventually gets married to one while in prison in 2011, but we'll get to that later. But yeah, he's kind of like a badass in prison, you know? And the fact that he doesn't talk...
I'm sure it goes around and it earns him some more respect. And the two prisons he ends up spending time in in America are in San Diego and Texas. And you can guess what the prisoner makeup is. All sorts of cartel and Mexican gang dudes locked up with him. Lots of new friends and new connections in the drug game. Shortly after he's sent to that prison in Texas, though, he gets deported back to Canada. And because it got reduced and with time served, he's actually released in 2011.
Does he straighten up and fly right, Sean, do you think? I bet you think he does. You sweet little summer child. You think he gets it together, he gets a real job and becomes a family man, right? And the episode just ends right here, 20 minutes in. You think that happens, don't you?
Yeah. Yeah. Well, guess what, dummy? He doesn't. The guy loves doing crime, and he's kind of good at it despite that hiccup. I mean, he's dog shit at snowboarding, so he might as well do this. Yeah, I mean, you get 24th, you're not really... Burden isn't knocking down your door for a sponsorship, you know what I'm saying? Might as well just fall down the mountain.
so this is what he starts to make the transition to like a big boy narco you know 2013 he's back in canada he decides to head to the place where the aspiring big-time professional international criminal is going to be able to make some power moves which is in montreal and we've done the risotto family we've done the hells angels and the other bikers so you guys know the montreal drug game the organized crime game there is serious on a seriously international level i mean don't get me wrong vancouver where he is originally
It's gnarly with street gangs and some bikers and Asian organized crime as well, but the Montreal Mafia and the Hells Angels are a whole different breed. But this is also around the time the Sinaloa Cartel is starting to expand heavy in Canada and get involved on the ground.
This actually reminds me of another sort of really early episode we did. I think it's from the same era on another small town Canada boy, Jimmy Korniawe, who was pushing a billion dollars of weed in the New York area. I think at one point, the biggest weed dealer in the Northeast by aligning with bikers, street gangs, the mob, even Native American smugglers across the border. It's funny that Wedding also stands accused of having a billion dollar drug ring too. The feds just love those big round numbers.
yeah big round completely made up numbers i remember that jimmy guy it was like the one name that even i had absolutely no idea how to pronounce and you've just proved me wrong like 10 times pronouncing it i think that's it i think i had a french canadian sign off on it but no i mean look both those guys were pushing weight of like astronomical proportions so i think a billion
probably isn't too far at all. Do they round up from like 925? Who knows how these numbers are calculated anyway, street value, wholesale value, whatever. The point is, the guy is a major player. So when wedding leaves prison, originally, he's motivated, he has this plan, he has these contacts, and the risottos themselves are actually weakened. And the Canadian biker gangs too, they're on their back foot after the big biker war and the raids. So there's room to maneuver. And
And he must have got things going really, really quickly because by 2013, the Canadian authorities are already looking into two men, one with Air Force connections and one with Coast Guard connections, and they're looking to move 1,000 keys. And that's when his name comes up.
The investigation eventually points to Wedding as the ringleader. He's being fingered as working with a guy who has some connections to Chapo at that point. In fact, Wedding meets with an undercover agent and they're discussing plans to move away from the Caribbean into Canada through sailboats and small fishing boats into Newfoundland and then Montreal, which is not the most original plan, but sort of a classic of the genre.
Wedding's introduced to the undercover as the man in charge and openly talks about himself as a cocaine importer. I mean, you've got to hand it to this guy. He's like, I don't know, he's a bit of a dummy at times, falling up. Actually, falling up, that would be a great name for a biography about a snowboarder drug dealer. That is not bad. Do you ever wonder sometimes, do you ever think and say, you know, like, I'm smarter than these guys. If I ever just put my mind to it, does thought ever cross your mind? No, I never think that.
Strangely, on paper in 2014, Wedding is broke, right? We know this because he files for bankruptcy and states for the record that he is unemployed. But at the same time, he's driving a brand new Ford F-350 and living with his wife in a gated community. And oh yeah, he gets married in prison in 2011 to an Iranian woman that would later be investigated, though never charged, with some funny money moves and a kidnapping. But as of now, she has not been charged. I think these are all recent charges in the past couple years.
Then in 2015, the French Navy intercepts a boat with 200 keys near Antigua in the French Caribbean, which I didn't think the French Navy patrolled over there, but I guess it makes sense that they do. Then the Canadian authorities move in and do some takedowns, arresting a bunch of people with help from the undercover who had infiltrated the ring. Wedding, though, evades arrest, which is a little weird. And this is how Rolling Stone writes it up, quote,
Wedding was never arrested in connection with the case. And other than the brief moment he met with an undercover officer in Montreal, he doesn't appear in the reams of investigative files and court documents related to it. Liam Price, the Director General, International Special Services for the RCMP, which is Canada's equivalent of the FBI, says Wedding has been a fugitive from justice since 2015, but wouldn't say if Canadian police have been actively pursuing him since that time.
And later on, a bunch of people involved in that 2015 case are mysteriously gunned down. But I guess, you know, it's not that mysterious in these circumstances. So technically, Wedding has been a fugitive and wanted since that bust in 2015. But I think even though we are talking now about $20 million shipments, he was definitely not seen as a big-time player like he is now. Now, later on in the 2010s and into the 2020s,
is when wedding really gets cooking. The timing is tricky on some of this stuff, but at some point, he hooks up with Meroero, his friend Andrew Clark from the cold open. He's a close friend from growing up and another kind of flannel-wearing Canadian, also known as the dictator and El Nino Problematico, aka the problem child, which...
You know, dude, come on. El Nino Problematico. Okay. It definitely sounds like a nickname that a white Canadian guy gives himself in Mexico. Like, I'm just kind of saying. You know, like, don't get me wrong. Dude does a lot of Problematico, but still, like, I can't see, like, El Mayo and his boys just being like, oh, yeah, this guy. This guy's the problem child right here. You know, throwing that nickname out there. Yeah, that is the guy with the jester beanie. He's, like, doing magic tricks for girls on Playa del Carmen or something right now. That's just like what you were doing, right? Kind of close.
I was wearing more of a straw hat, you know, but no magic tricks. Previously, the problem child was an elevator mechanic, which is actually like a really good job if you look into it, super high paying, and a small-time landlord. In fact, he must have been either really good at leading a double life or not involved in the drug game until fairly recently because in 2020, Toronto Life Magazine interviews him for an article highlighting how landlords are dealing with the first few weeks of the pandemic.
Him and his wife apparently have six properties and seven tenants at the time, and Clark cuts his tenants some discounts to help out. The CBC reports on an email he wrote to the magazine, quote, I want to show our tenants that I care about them, not just about them paying me. We are lucky I have a good job, and we are very frugal. I mean, I don't know, man. Going from nothing to like the right-hand man of a billion-dollar drug empire ordering hits in like three to four years, I'm going to go ahead and say that he was probably already involved.
Yeah, I mean, also, I feel like half the stories I've looked into lately, like Chinese money launderers, Pacific drug cartels, they are washing all of their money through Canadian property. Canadian listeners tell us what's going on there. It's nuts. Oh, yeah, it's insane, dude. The way it moves through real estate there. Like I said, there's no laws in Canada, dude. They can just do what they want. There's that guy who actually has a sub-stack called the Bureau, I think, which is like he's the one who's done all these insane exposés on drugs.
the like billions and billions of dollars of illicit money traveling through Canada. And it's all nuts. And a lot of it's connected to like the cartels, the Chinese Communist Party. It is wild, wild stuff. We'll talk a little bit more about that in two weeks, actually.
Yeah. Wedding's operation, according to the feds, is now moving major shipments, hundreds of keys from Southern California into Canada. He's got two Indo-Canadian trucking magnets for the Transpo. Here's a 2024 federal indictment. Wedding and Clark, quote, conspired to ship bulk quantities of cocaine weighing hundreds of kilograms from Southern California to Canada through a Canada-based drug transportation network run by Hard Deep Rot, 46th of Ontario, Canada,
and Gurpreet Singh, 31, of Ontario, Canada. The cocaine shipments were transported from Mexico to the Los Angeles area, where the cocaine trafficking organization's operatives stored the cocaine in stash houses before delivering it to the transportation network couriers for delivery to Canada using long-haul semi-trucks. But unfortunately for Wedding, his massive operation is already compromised. Big time compromised.
Because one of his trust lieutenants who has worked with him for a decade or so flips sometime in 2023 and becomes an informant. A guy by the name of Jonathan Acevedo Garcia. Garcia has been arrested in both the U.S. and Canada. He also does time in the same Texas prison as Wedding. And here he starts wearing a wire.
He records a meeting with Wedding in January of 2024, where they discuss moving 350 kilo shipments of Ye using that Canadian trucking network we mentioned earlier, who are also an uncle-nephew team, which is kind of like the Party Rock guys. Remember them, dude? Those guys, they had a hell of a summer that year. Wait.
Hold on. LFMAO were an uncle and nephew. The guys with the big hair. First of all, it's amazing that you remember the name of the band. I commend you, dude. But yeah, no, they were an uncle and nephew team for sure. Wow. Okay. That makes them even lamer? No, dude. They ruled.
Great summer with those guys. Thank you. Great summer with those guys. Wedding's team, speaking of LMFAO, they're also apparently moving Fent and Meth. We should add a legal disclaimer. Yeah, I don't think... I don't have any evidence that points to LMFAO being involved with Fentanyl or Meth, just for the record.
A month later in February of that year, Clark, the right-hand man, he tells Garcia, the informant, to meet with the uncle and nephew and negotiate a flat fee for the shipments, which ends up being 220 key per shipment. And they end up moving about 650 keys together. Also, remember the cold open, the couple that gets killed for mistaken identity? That had to do with a shipment that was stolen in Southern California by a trucker. I don't think that network was involved, though.
there's more trouble for weddings organization in the middle of 2024 in june with a guy that he's wholesaling to and that's naheem bonilla who's a montreal bar owner who runs into some trouble in 2019 when his house keeps getting set on fire and there's a shooting outside of it which means he was probably not just you know owning a bar and bartending he moves to miami and like any guy who is totally doing things above board
He buys DJ Khaled's mansion and hangs out with Ja Rule. He lists himself again, like any upstanding citizen, as the CEO of a record label, and he also owns a Miami restaurant/nightclub, which is, you know, a bigger indicator of a guy being a dirtbag than pretty much anything else is owning a restaurant/nightclub in Miami. There is nothing bigger than that. I mean, why would I want my Yorkshire Puds and Spotted Dick in full view of a pole dancer's pole? I don't know, it's disgusting. And I know you agree with me on that.
I don't know, dude. If you've ever been to Eleven, it's kind of, they make it work. They really do. Take me there. Take me there. I don't know if I have the willpower or the money to do that anymore.
But Bonilla, he breaks rule number 10, which is that he starts selling on consignment, which, as we've reminded you many times, is strictly for live men and not for freshmen. Wedding & Co. would give him 12 keys, of which he would pay for seven right away. He'd be fronted five. He messes up those sometime in the early summer. He doesn't have the money to pay Wedding for those five keys. So Wedding, like any good businessman, sends him a message on that encrypted chat they used. It was called Threema.
that he's going to have Bonilla's mom killed unless he pays up for those five keys as soon as possible. Is that one of those networks the authorities cracked, like the incro chat stuff? I don't think so. Because the way that these guys got these messages was because the guy didn't delete them. But
But it might have been cracked. I don't know specifically. I'm not sure about Threema. I do remember EncroChat and that huge thing, and those guys were working on a book about it, I think, that we've had on, or big articles on it. But I don't know what the situation with Threema was. It is amazing how many of those there are, though, you know? Yeah, yeah. Was the Encro one the one that the feds built themselves?
Yes, I think so. It's like three or four years ago now. Yeah. And they fed about the super cartels in Europe and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just good work, man. Bonilla right away sends him 20K in crypto, because of course, and then promises to send 20 keys of meth to Canada as a repayment, which he does. And that's how we get this incredible headline, Montreal landlord accused of shipping meth to repay fugitive ex-Olympian, which is, you know, great stuff.
But, you know, like anyone managing a bunch of dummies, weddings' problems are never-ending. So that happens in June. In July, Gurpeet Singh, who's the nephew in the Indian trucking duo, he heads to Sinaloa to resolve some sort of debt issue with the Sinaloans. And a few days after arriving in early August, he promptly gets kidnapped in Kulia Khan, which is, you know, guess it doesn't get resolved. And I kind of feel like that's kind of how the Sinaloans usually deal with debt issues, so...
Flying there to kind of figure it out. Not the not the wisest thing in the in the world sings wife She helps collect 400k to send as a ransom and then wedding Negotiates his release and he's freed a few days later, which you know, dude like what a what a headache It is just being a top narco, you know, it's you're working with these knuckleheads It's one thing after another and all due respect Sean you got no idea what it's like to be number one every decision you make affects every facet of every other thing and
it's too much to deal with almost and in the end you're completely alone with it all yeah i mean i get it man you're doing the advertising emails now this guy this guy singh is also a mover and a shaker enough to be operating in the uae and taking meetings with the big time irish mob family the kinahans who are global global cartel garcia the informant had also been meeting with singh in uae this guy's all over the map dude with the wire which is crazy
According to the CBC, U.S. prosecutors say he had, quote, "...extensive organized crime connections within Dubai, including relationships with members of the Kinahan Gang, which is a well-known, violent, organized crime group operating throughout the world."
Sing 31 is also alleged to have been involved in a scheme to ship stolen high-end cars to Dubai through the port of Montreal. It's just kind of wild, huh? You know, like the interconnectedness of it all. Just like what a little crew that they put together. You know, they're like the Avengers, except they keep messing up and also very diverse.
Canadian crime groups, they're like the community college brochures. The NBA playoffs are here, and I'm getting my best in on FanDuel. Talk to me, Chuck GPT. What do you know? All sorts of interesting stuff. Even Charles Barkley's greatest fear. Hey, nobody needs to know that. New customers bet $5 to get 200 in bonus bets if you win FanDuel, America's number one sportsbook.
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She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her.
Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying.
Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah, wherever you get your podcasts. 2024 as well is when those hits from the cold opening are happening and Wedding and Clark are just paying him in to take people out. You've got that couple killed after they were mistaken for a truck driver who ripped off a shipment. You have the guy in Niagara Falls. Another guy in Brampton, you know, is killed over a drug debt that's in Ontario. And as we mentioned earlier, there's like a half dozen more people on Wedding and Clark's hit list.
But with the help of that informant wearing a wire, Garcia, and the phone from our friend Mr. Perfect in the cold open, things get tight around the wedding operation. There's massive raids on his network in October. The feds dub it Operation Giant Slalom after weddings Olympic racing sport. Probably, you know, all the good snow references were taken. 14 guys overall are targeting Colombia, the States, Canada, and Mexico. The truck guys go down. Bonilla gets bagged at his DJ Colin mansion in Miami.
In Mexico, there's a daring daytime raid by the Mexican Marines, who are no joke, at a restaurant in Guadalajara, Jalisco, where they managed to arrest Wedding's right-hand man, Clark. Remember that story from February a few months ago about the dozens, I think 30 or so, cartel guys being extradited from Mexico to the U.S. in like an unprecedented move? One of them is the cartel guy I was supposed to embed with a few years ago, El Durango, and one of them is this guy, Clark, which gives you an idea of how big they actually were. Wow.
And another strange thing, he gets let out of bail in Mexico for a minute. Nobody knows why, though. I mean, come on, we know why. But then he's recaptured with, there's no details forthcoming on that, but we kind of know what they are. Here's the FBI statement on those initial raids. Quote, Which I bet, I bet the guy who came up with that is like very proud of himself for that one. And here's another quote.
Quote, the former Canadian snowboarder unleashed an avalanche of death and destruction here and abroad. How long do you think these guys like come to, like how long do they take to come up with this stuff? It's like, it's New York Post headline levels except kind of worse. It's kind of like heartening to see folks in the public eye clearly want to be failed journalists instead of
wannabe, instead of journalist being just wannabe failed everything else. I don't know. There might be something aspirational to this job after all. Is there? Wedding, of course, is still a fugitive right now, but he certainly makes for good headlines like, Former Olympian Wanted for Running Transnational Drug Enterprise and Ordering Several Murders Added to the FBI's List of 10 Most Wanted. Which, yeah, he makes the 10 Most Wanted list, which has got to feel like kind of an accomplishment, I guess, if you're in that world.
Four murder charges in the charges, eight counts total, which include conspiracies that traffic cocaine and murder and attempted murder in connection with a continuing criminal enterprise. Wedding is believed to be hiding out of Mexico, but also they say it could potentially be in Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, or even the U.S. and Canada, though I highly doubt that.
They also report that he worked super closely with the Sinaloa cartel and is effectively under their protection, which is, according to media, which has probably fed that through law enforcement. But Sinaloa has kind of always been like a federation, you know? And right now it's in the middle of a civil war with Los Chapitos fighting the Mayitos. I think it's a third faction as well, which we've covered extensively. So not sure which faction he's riding with or now that he's been handicapped somewhat, if they even care about him that much.
This past January, a couple months ago, that informant that wore the wire, Jonathan Acevedo Garcia, is eating lunch at a restaurant in a shopping center in Medellin, Colombia. Which, brother, if you are a witness in a federal drug trafficking case, why are you in Colombia and Medellin of all places? Look, don't get me wrong. I get it, man. Paisa is like, you know, but you got to be smarter. And that goes for all of you. Just be smarter.
At 2.30 p.m., broad daylight, a guy with a pistol equipped with a silencer fires five shots into him and kills the guy. Killer escapes on a motorcycle driven by a partner. They dump it and hop in a truck and escape. Now, Garcia wasn't publicly known as an informant then, so Wedding must have gotten tipped off or just had his suspicions. Either way...
He clearly is still not messing around. And now the key witness is dead, though I'm assuming they have a pretty airtight case already. Either way, major bungling by the feds for letting this guy get gunned down. And that's where we leave off. Ryan Wedding, $10 million bounty on his head for info leading to his capture, which is kind of wild when you think about it. Still on the run, but for how long? I guess it's all been downhill since Salt Lake, you could say. Nice. Yeah.
Yeah, that's the level, right? That's the level. I finally found it all the way in. Yeah, that was pretty good, dude. I don't know, man. Do I have to... I'm really worried about these eyeballs. Dude, you can't take those guys seriously, man. You know? They... A lot of people have talked about your jawline and how handsome you are. Don't... Don't sweat it, man. You look... You look great. And yeah, that's the episode. As always, if you work at Rockstar Games, give us a call. Help us figure something out because... We're not desperate. No, we're getting there.
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