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From an Olympic Snowboarder to an Accused Drug Kingpin and Killer

The target was a drug trafficker turned F.B.I. informant who didn’t stand a chance. As he had lunch with friends at a restaurant in Medellín, Colombia, a hit man in a dark hoodie sneaked up behind him and shot him five times in the head.

The man who had ordered the hit quickly received a photograph of the body, the authorities said. He reshared it widely — boasting that he had killed “the rat.”

The man behind the killing was Ryan Wedding, a Canadian who rose to fame as an Olympic snowboarder two decades ago, only to become what the authorities describe as one of the world’s biggest drug lords. “El Jefe,” as he was known, ran a drug-trafficking empire out of Mexico and was now one of the most wanted fugitives in the world.

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