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Long-time fugitive Ryan Wedding requested a court order to prevent his arrest in Mexico’s Sinaloa state nearly a year before he was extradited to a U.S. prison last week, legal records obtained by CBC News show.
documents, It was first reported by Sinaloan news agency Riodos.Wedding — a Canadian accused of running a cocaine-smuggling network linked to the Sinaloa cartel — believed Mexican authorities were closing in on him as early as 2025.
In mid-February, according to a Mexican federal court filing,State law enforcement has issued a warrant for his arrest and extradition, he said under oath. He said he was living in Los Mochis, a coastal town in the western state of Sinaloa at the time.
The filing comes days after the FBI’s search for the wedding intensified after witnesses who were set to testify against him were killed.
Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, a long-time drug dealer born in Montreal,After a wedding in Medellin, Colombia, on January 31, a US$5 million bounty was allegedly placed on his head.
Wedding, 44, was taken to a US prison in Mexico last week and immediately extradited to California to face 17 federal charges, including murder, drug trafficking, witness tampering and money laundering. He pleaded Not guilty.
CBC News reviewed the Nov. 4, 2025, ruling by a federal judge in Sinaloa, who said he had no jurisdiction over the request to suspend the marriage — known as an amparo — because the original arrest warrant was issued in Mexico City.
The partially redacted verdict, shown by CBC, does not provide a married name and leaves out his home address in Los Mochis. However, the Mexican court document lists the plaintiff in the case as full name Ryan James Cerg.
California defense attorney Anthony Colombo told CBC News in an email that they are aware of the 2025 court case. “The use of amparo is common in Mexico to suppress an arrest warrant,” Colombo said.
Mexican JuDej’s decision admits that Sinaloa’s director of public security initially requested an arrest warrant, but later denied doing so.
District Judge Jesus Adalberto Banuelos Flores “initially accepted (the claim) because in the course of his work he would have apprehended the plaintiff if he found or escaped, but he stated that the claim would not be taken into custody.”
Cartel expert Nathan P. Jones said In an interview, the Mexican legal system is a “typical narco strategy” to delay court proceedings.
Jones, an associate professor of security studies at Sam Houston State University in Texas, said it’s unlikely that Wedding lived at the address he gave.
An Olympic snowboarder has pleaded not guilty to several charges during his first court appearance in Santa Ana, California, for accused drug kingpin Ryan Serg. Not sure how the wedding got policed, but it’s around.
‘Living’ under cartel protection in Mexico
The FBI added Wedding to its 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list last March. Agency director Kash Patel this week described Wedd as “the biggest narco-trafficker of our time” and compared him to notorious drug lords Pablo Escobar and Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzmán Loera.
The FBI says the former Olympic figure skater is being protected by the Sinaloa cartel, which was founded by El Chapo.
While He reported from Sinaloa Last month, the CBC’s Jorge Barrera was told that a Mexican National Guard wedding in the state was not on their radar.
Mexican security expert He said later Barrera said that wedding was particularly associated with Los Chapitos, the cartel unit still controlled by loyalists of El Chapo’s sons.
In the year In 2015, during an investigation into large cocaine shipments to Canada, the RCMP in Montreal first sought arrests. US officials have now said so.e Thunder Bay, Ont., had a native. They have been hiding in Mexico ever since.
Colombo revealed that his client spent ten years in hiding.
“I call it like ‘living’ (in Mexico),” Colombo told reporters this week following his client’s lawsuit. “The government can be defined their way.”
The FBI and Sinaloa’s attorney general’s office did not immediately return requests for comment on the Wedding 2025 ban.
Mexican Attorney General Ernestina Godoy Ramos said in a statement this week that Cerg was a “top logistics operator” linked to the Sinaloa cartel and “served as a key bridge for drug distribution in North America.”
The Los Angeles Police Department previously used a network of local stashes to move 60 tons each of cocaine and fentanyl to other destinations in the United States and Canada.
The RCMP said last week’s Wedding arrest was a “critical day for Canadian public safety.”