A prominent Canadian defence lawyer was arrested Tuesday and accused in the United States of helping kill a witness who was set to testify against a former Canadian Olympic athlete wanted as a top-tier global narco boss.
The lawyer was publicly named by officials and in an indictment filed in U.S. court as Deepak Paradkar, who is known as a scrappy drug defence specialist who previously represented serial killer Dellen Millard.
The announcement in Washington, D.C, gathered top U.S. and Canadian law enforcement officials, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, director of the FBI, and Michael Duhaime, commissioner of the RCMP.
Bilal A. Essayli, an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, said that the new U.S. federal indictment charges 15 people, “including a Canadian lawyer and a Latin pop star,” with “orchestrating the January 2025 murder of a witness who was shot five times in the head at a restaurant in Colombia and who died instantly.”
“Wedding placed a bounty on the victim’s head in the erroneous belief that the victim’s death would result in the dismissal of criminal charges against him and his international drug trafficking ring and would further ensure that he was not extradited to the United States,” Essayli said. “He was wrong.”
The witness was shot dead in January.
Top law enforcement officials from the United States and Canada announced Paradjkar was arrested along with six others in Quebec, Ontario and Alberta in connection with the allegations against Ryan Wedding, who competed for Canada in the 2002 Olympic in snowboarding before allegedly becoming a world-class drug lord.
Officials alleged that after advice from Paradkar, Wedding paid a Canadian website that publishes crime news to post photos of the witness and the witness’s wife.
Deepak Balwant Paradkar is named in the indictment, which described him as a dual citizen of both Canada and India who “was a member and associate of the Wedding Criminal Enterprise.”
The indictment alleges that Paradkar “advised defendant Wedding and Clark to murder Victim A so that they would avoid extradition from Mexico on the criminal charges” in the 2024 indictment against the pair.
“In addition, defendant Paradkar provided and offered to provide defendant Wedding and Clark with, among other things: (a) court documents and discovery that they would not otherwise have access to; and (b) access to enterprise members and associates who were either arrested, indicted, or under investigation through attorneys whose representation defendant Paradkar secured.”
Paradkar could not be reached for comment. An emailed request sent to an email address previously used to reach him went unanswered prior to deadline. Officials said he was currently in custody.
“I understand he initially refused to come out of his home,” Essayli said. “He put up a little bit of resistance, but he was eventually taken into custody.
“It was very important for us to get him, because when you have people who are officers of the court, who are lawyers, we take oaths to protect the public and defend the law. And when you have lawyers who are assisting international drug trafficking players on how to evade law.”
Paradkar was once admonished by some colleagues in Ontario for attracting clients with his brash (now defunct) Instagram account @Cocaine_lawyer, where he posted photos of clients being freed from drug charges along with his mantra: “Trials are war — choose a general.”
He posted photos of flashy cars and of himself with clients he represented who beat drug charges, and is known in Ontario court circles for sometimes wearing wild, expensive designer shoes to court. The indictment lists “Cocaine_lawyer” as one of Paradkar’s aliases.
The same day Paradkar was arrested, a website called The Dirty News was seized. The website’s address now displays a notice of seizure by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office, noting the assistance of the RCMP, in Operation Giant Slalom, the name for the probe of what officials call the Ryan Wedding Criminal Enterprise.
The operation’s logo features a snow boarder in snowsuit, gloves, goggles and scarf on a snowboard leaping over the face of a globe.
The indictment names Gursewak Singh Bal, 31, of Mississauga, as the founder and operator of the Dirty News website. He is also charged in the indictment and named as a member and associate of the Wedding organization. The indictment alleges that another Canadian member and associate of Wedding’s organization paid Bal not to post about Wedding and Clark and also paid him to post the target’s photo so he could be located.
A message to Bal through a social media account requesting comment went unanswered by deadline.
A reward for information leading to the arrest of Wedding, 44, was raised to US$15 million from US$10 million. He is on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List and thought to be in hiding in Mexico protected there by the notorious and powerful Sinaloa Cartel.
“He controls one of the most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations in this world. He is currently the largest distributor of cocaine in Canada. Wedding collaborates closely with the Sinaloa Cartel, a foreign terrorist organization to flood not only American, but also Canadian communities with cocaine coming from Colombia,” Bondi said.
Wedding is accused of being the mastermind and violent, hardnose boss of a long list of alleged underlings responsible for importing approximately 60 tonnes of cocaine a year into Los Angeles aboard commercial trucks from Mexico. Authorities say Los Angeles is then used as a staging area for wider distribution, including across the border into Canada.
He was indicted last year, along with his alleged right-hand man, another Canadian named Andrew Clark. U.S. authorities say more than 35 people have been indicted in the case, and many have been arrested in Canada and the United States. The indictments include multiple murders.
A new indictment, unsealed Wednesday, authorities said, adds more accused, many in Canada, on more charges, including for the murder of the intended federal witness.
Officials said new charges accused Wedding of witness tampering, witness intimation, murder, money laundering and drug trafficking.
U.S. authorities say that the witness was eventually found, attributing the web posting on Dirty News, and killed.
Wedding, 43, who was born in Thunder Bay, Ont., and moved to Coquitlam, B.C., and then Montreal, competed in the Salt Lake City Olympic Games in 2002.
Michael Duhaime, Commissioner, was in Washington for the high-level announcement that also included Kash Patel, director of the FBI.
Duhaime called it an “historical announcement.”
“Yesterday morning, the RCMP and Ontario Provincial Police proceeded by arresting seven Canadians with ties to the Wedding organized crime group,” Duhaime said. There is one target of police in Canada who is still at large, he said.
U.S. officials also announced rewards of up to $2 million each for information leading to the arrest of the unknown assassins who carried out the January murder of the witness.
“Protecting federal witnesses from retaliation is core to the department’s mission. It’s about individual safety, but more, it’s about protecting the rule of law itself,” Bondi said.
The U.S. Treasury Department also announced the seizing of assets for approximately 19 of the targets associated with Wedding’s criminal enterprise, worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
As if the various murders was not evidence, Akhil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles division warned that citizens should not approach Wedding but call the FBI.
“Ryan Wedding has orchestrated murders against his rivals, against cooperating witnesses, against anybody that crosses his path,” he said.
“Make no mistake, Ryan Wedding is extremely dangerous. He’s extremely violent, and he’s extremely wealthy. He’s being protected by the Sinaloa cartel, along with others in the country of Mexico. We will find him, and we will bring him to justice.”
Along with Paradkar and Bal, seven others were arrested Tuesday.
They are named in the indictment as: Atna Ohna, 40, of Laval, Que., also known as “Tupac” and “Kim Jong Un”; Allistair Chapman, 33, of Calgary, also known as “Ali Star”; Ahmad Nabil Zitoun, 35, of Edmonton; Edwin Basora-Hernandez, 31, of Montreal; and Rolan Sokolovski, 37, of Toronto, also known as “The Jew” and “Sushi.”
Two others with ties to Canada are listed as fugitives: Rasheed Pascua Hossain, 32, of Vancouver, also known as “Sheed”, and Tommy Demorizi, 35, of Montreal, who is believed to be a fugitive in the Dominican Republic.
