Authorities in the United States have offered a $10m reward for information that leads to the arrest of a Canadian former Olympic snowboarder-turned-international drug kingpin.

Police in Los Angeles said on Thursday that Ryan Wedding – also known as “El Jefe”, “Giant” and “Public Enemy” – is wanted for his role in a billion-dollar cross-border drug trafficking operation and for several homicides linked to his drug sprawling network.

Wedding, who the FBI said is one of the US’s top 10 most-wanted fugitives, is probably hiding in Mexico under the protection of the Sinaloa drug cartel, officials said.

“The increase in the reward should make it clear: there is nowhere safe for Wedding to hide,” the LAPD deputy chief, Alan Hamilton, told reporters.

The 43-year-old, who grew up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, competed for Team Canada in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic games, where he placed 24th in the parallel giant slalom event.

Four years after the Games, Ryan Wedding was named in a search warrant investigating a marijuana-growing operation in British Columbia, but was never charged.

In 2010, Wedding was convicted of drug trafficking after attempting to buy cocaine from a US government agent and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Described by media at the time as a 2010 “Olympic hopeful”, Wedding sought to dismiss the charges, alleging “outrageous conduct” by US authorities, suggesting they used a “violent former KGB agent” as an undercover operative.

But in the years since, he has emerged as a powerful and ruthless transnational narcotics trafficker.

Last year, Wedding was charged by the US Department of Justice for leading a group that engaged in “cocaine trafficking and murder, including of innocent civilians”.

Wedding is alleged to have overseen the transport of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia, through Mexico and southern California, and into Canada. Los Angeles police said Wedding’s operation also moved “five metric tonnes of fentanyl per month” to US and Canadian cities.

Wedding and fellow Canadian Andrew Clark are also accused of hiring hitmen to murder those the pair believed were obstacles to their operation, including a man murdered sitting in his car in the driveway of his home, who police said had drug debts.

But in one case, officials say two victims were the inadvertent targets of retaliation for a stolen drug shipment.

In 2023, gunmen attacked a rental home in Caledon, Ontario, killing Jagtar Singh Sidhu, 57, and Harbhajan Kaur Sidhu, 55, who had arrived to Canada four months earlier. Their daughter Jaspreet Kaur Sidhu, was shot 13 times and left critically injured.

Of the 16 defendants sought by police, Wedding and another are the only ones still on the loose.

Clark was arrested on 8 October 2024 by Mexican law enforcement and was transferred on 27 February to the United States.