WorldThe FBI says one of fugitive Ryan Wedding’s former accomplices has been arrested. The news came after CBC News learned that another one of Wedding’s former collaborators had turned against him.Rasheed Pascua Hossain arrested Friday on charges related to cocaine trafficking, money launderingListen to this articleEstimated 4 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.An image of former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding is shown during an FBI news conference in October 2024. The alleged drug kingpin remains a fugitive. (Damian Dovarganes/The Associated Press)The FBI says another one of fugitive Ryan Wedding’s former accomplices has been arrested.Rasheed Pascua Hossain, a 32-year-old from Vancouver who went by the alias “JP Morgan,” was arrested on Friday by the RCMP and faces U.S. charges related to cocaine trafficking and money laundering.Hossain was a key player in Wedding’s multimillion-dollar money-laundering operation, according to a U.S. federal grand jury indictment that was unsealed this week.The news came after CBC News learned that another one of fugitive Ryan Wedding’s former accomplices had turned against him.Records filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice reveal the FBI secured the help of a new informant this year who had “trafficked drugs with Wedding and assisted Wedding with committing multiple murders.”Ten people were arrested this week as part of an FBI investigation into an alleged drug-trafficking organization that Wedding is said to head. He remains at large.According to the court documents filed this week as U.S. authorities seek to extradite Canadian co-defendants in the case, the unnamed drug trafficker “agreed to assist U.S. authorities in the investigation of Wedding’s organization, specifically in regard to the January 2025 murder” of a previous key witness, Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia.Acebedo-Garcia, a Canadian-Colombian longtime drug trafficker, was shot to death in Medellín, Colombia, in what U.S. prosecutors describe as retaliation for helping the FBI target Wedding’s criminal enterprise.According to court documents, the new informant met with investigators “multiple times” between February and this month.As well, Wedding, the former Olympic snowboarder turned alleged drug kingpin, purportedly reached out to him in October 2024 for help identifying the FBI’s initial confidential source, who was later named in court documents as Acebedo-Garcia.Acebedo-Garcia’s killing is at the centre of the sprawling grand jury indictment unsealed this week, which led to new charges against Wedding and several alleged co-conspirators.WATCH | Who is Ryan Wedding?:Ryan Wedding, 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. He’s been on the run since 2015, wanted in connection with multiple drug and conspiracy crimes, in addition to ordering and orchestrating murder.Wedding ‘suspected’ he knew who it wasThe court documents say Wedding “suspected he knew the identity” of the FBI’s confidential source, but he sought assistance from the informant — now helping U.S. law enforcement — in confirming that.At a certain point, Wedding asked Atna Ohna — alleged in the documents to be “a Montreal-based hitman” who worked for him — to confront the suspected FBI source via text. According to the documents, the person on the other end of that communication “admitted” to be working for the FBI against Wedding. That confirmation occurred in October 2024.Wedding and the informant then had a group chat on an unnamed encrypted messaging application with a Toronto lawyer — identified in the court documents as Deepak Paradkar.It’s alleged that the lawyer said if the confidential source “was eliminated” and could not appear in court, an indictment against Wedding and his drug organization would likely be dismissed.’Wanted to murder’ the FBI sourceWedding subsequently told the informant “he wanted to murder” the FBI source and was willing to spend up to $5 million US to make that happen.The court documents also describe the efforts Wedding and others allegedly took to track down and ultimately kill Acebedo-Garcia.Authorities allege Wedding arranged a payment of $10,000 Cdn to have Acebedo-Garcia’s photo published on a crime-related blog to draw out tips about his whereabouts.WATCH | Increased reward for information about Canadian fugitive Ryan Wedding:Ryan Wedding labelled modern-day Pablo Escobar by FBI, facing new chargesU.S. officials have laid new charges against Canadian Olympian and alleged drug lord Ryan Wedding. Several associates were also arrested in Canada, including a Toronto-area defence lawyer.Efforts were also made to gain information about the Colombia-based girlfriend of the FBI source, in a bid to get to Acebedo-Garcia.The documents say Wedding also sent a person from Canada down to Colombia to try to locate an Airbnb rental property that the FBI source operated. That person made two such trips, one in December 2024 and another in early January 2025. Acebedo-Garcia was slain while he was at a restaurant with friends on Jan. 31 of this year, according to the court records. A person walked up behind him and shot him in the head “approximately five times” before leaving the restaurant and fleeing the scene on a motorcycle, the documents say.The informant told authorities that Wedding later sent a photo of the slain man’s body “to numerous individuals, bragging that he had killed the ‘rat.’”ABOUT THE AUTHORThomas is a CBC News reporter based in Toronto. In recent years, he has covered some of the biggest stories in the world, from the 2015 Paris attacks to the Tokyo Olympics and the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. He’s reported from the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster, the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa and the Pope’s visit to Canada aimed at reconciliation with Indigenous people. Thomas can be reached at thomas.daigle@cbc.ca.
Another accomplice of Ryan Wedding arrested by the RCMP in Vancouver, says FBI
