What we know about Ryan Wedding, the former Canadian Olympian who became one of the FBI's most wanted

The Canadian at the centre of one of the biggest international criminal investigations in the world continues to evade capture thanks in part, the FBI says, to protection from the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel and other criminal entities in Mexico. 

Ryan Wedding has been on the run since 2015, wanted in connection to multiple drug and conspiracy crimes, in addition to ordering and orchestrating murder.  

That led the U.S. State Department on Wednesday to increase the reward for Wedding’s capture to $15 million US, up from $10 million US.

Here’s what we know about Wedding — how he went from Canadian Olympian to one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives today. 

Canadians may have first heard the name Ryan Wedding during the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. 

An avid skier, Wedding started snowboarding in his early teens after his family moved from Ontario to British Columbia. He became a member of the Canadian National Ski Team, and went on to compete in snowboarding at the Olympics in parallel giant slalom.

He didn’t medal. 

His snowboarding career ended after that, and in 2008 he was arrested after travelling to California to buy cocaine. At the time, the FBI said it was believed he was working for a B.C. drug lord. Wedding spent about three years in U.S. prisons. 

He was next arrested by the RCMP in Montreal in April 2015 as part of a large-scale cocaine trafficking operation, but managed to flee to Mexico. 

He’s been on the run ever since. 

The U.S. Justice Department believes Wedding, now 44, is living in Mexico, where investigators  allege he oversees a massive drug trafficking criminal enterprise, under the protection of the Sinaloa cartel, one of the world’s oldest and most powerful cartels. 

But prosecutors