The FBI announced the arrest of Ryan Wedding on charges of cocaine trafficking and murder. Wedding is suspected of operating an international drug trafficking organization that used cryptocurrency to facilitate the movement of proceeds from transactions and money laundering.
This incident demonstrates the ongoing situation where digital assets, particularly stablecoin payments, play an increasingly important role in facilitating illicit financial transactions.
The FBI's decade-long manhunt has concluded.
According to the FBI, the 44-year-old wedding suspect, a former Canadian Olympic snowboarder, was detained on Thursday night. This arrest brought a decade-long investigation to a close for the wedding suspect, who had been named one of the Justice Department's most wanted fugitives.
Mexican authorities revealed that the wedding suspect voluntarily appeared at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City.
This arrest was based on suspicions that the wedding suspect was involved in international drug trafficking activities as part of one of Mexico's largest criminal organizations. According to authorities, the wedding suspect also used multiple aliases such as 'El Jefe' and 'Public Enemy.'
The suspect is suspected of operating and participating in an international drug trafficking organization that regularly smuggled hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to the United States and Canada via Mexico and Southern California as an alleged member of the Sinaloa Cartel,” posted FBI Director Kash Patel on social media.
In 2024, the FBI announced a reward of $15 million for information leading to the arrest of the wedding suspect.
Two months ago, Chief Prosecutor Bill Essairy revealed at a press conference that the wedding suspect was also responsible for a witness murder case where a head was shot five times in a Colombian restaurant last January.
Authorities also pointed out that the wedding suspect's organization was using cryptocurrency for money laundering and cross-border remittances of profits.
USDT wallets misused for concealing funds
According to the indictment, the wedding suspect's organization concealed a portion of the enormous profits from cocaine sales using U.S. dollars, Canadian dollars, and cryptocurrency.
Authorities claimed that the organization was utilizing an advanced Tether (USDT) based system.
In this method, large sums of money were divided into smaller amounts and funneled through multiple USDT wallets, ultimately consolidating into a central Tether wallet allegedly managed by the wedding suspect.
The indictment also stated that in November 2024, another defendant received approximately 2 million Colombian pesos to carry out the operation. This peso is said to have been exchanged from cryptocurrency as payment for about 300 kilograms of cocaine.
The case of the wedding suspect is just one of the recently revealed instances. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice prosecuted a Venezuelan national for involvement in a money laundering scheme worth 100 billion yen using cryptocurrency.
On the other hand, cryptocurrency crime recorded its highest value in 2025.
According to blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, addresses handling illicit funds received at least $15.4 trillion last year, an increase of 162% compared to the previous year, 2024.