A Toronto-area jeweller accused of acting as the “third in command” in former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding’s alleged cocaine empire could be sent to California by the end of the year to stand trial.
Rolan Sokolovski, who went by the aliases Sushi and Applepie, was ordered Wednesday to appear for an extradition hearing in Ontario Superior Court on Dec. 3.
U.S. prosecutors allege Sokolovski served as a “de facto bank” for Wedding by moving hundreds of millions in drug money and procuring the longtime fugitive luxury goods, including an ultra-rare $13-million US Mercedes CLK-GTR Roadster.
The 38-year-old former professional poker player appeared Wednesday before a provincial judge by video link from Maplehurst jail in Milton, Ont., where he’s been detained since his arrest last November.
According to court documents, the Lithuanian-born Sokolovski is accused of using cryptocurrency platforms and his Toronto-area business, Diamond Tsar, to launder proceeds for Wedding’s transnational criminal enterprise.
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He’s also accused of designing a bejewelled necklace for Atna Ohna, a Montreal-based alleged hitman for Wedding’s network, as a reward for his purported role in the murder of an FBI witness.
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Sokolovski’s lawyer Scott Fenton previously said the description of his client as Wedding’s third-in-command is not supported by evidence and that it amounted to “rhetorical flourish” by the Crown.
The criminal allegations against Sokolovski have not been proven in court.
The U.S. Department of Justice has since 2024 indicted at least 34 purported members and associates of Wedding’s drug ring, which authorities say moved tonnes of cocaine and fentanyl across North America and carried out dozens of killings.
Wedding was captured in Mexico in January, and U.S. authorities are still pursuing efforts in multiple countries to extradite several co-defendants.
Among them is a Colombian woman who authorities say ran “a high-end prostitution ring” in Mexico and introduced Wedding to his girlfriend.
Colombian court records reviewed by CBC News show Carmen Yelinet Valoyes Florez is being held at a Bogota jail amid allegations she used one of her sex workers to help Wedding locate the FBI’s informant who was later killed.
The incident bears parallels to the case of another co-accused, Gurpreet Singh, who investigators suspected may be linked to an assassination plot targeting an Ontario jail official.
Search warrant documents from a sweeping police corruption probe recently revealed how authorities looked into whether Singh, an alleged cocaine distributor for Wedding, and his personal acquaintance – a jail guard – were involved in the plot. Neither the woman nor Singh have been charged in connection with the alleged murder conspiracy.
Among the three Ontario men arrested last fall as part of the FBI and RCMP’s joint takedown of Wedding’s network, Sokolovski is the first to have a date set for a formal extradition hearing.
Gursewak Singh Bal, a Canadian crime blogger facing U.S. federal charges in connection with the sprawling conspiracy, also appeared from jail on Wednesday. His lawyer Trevin David told the downtown Toronto court the date for his client’s extradition hearing would be set at the end of the month.
Singh Bal operated the Dirty News, a website that U.S. authorities said was used to set up the murder of Quebec-born Jonathan Acebedo-Garcia, the FBI witness shot in the head while having lunch in Medellín, Colombia.
Prominent criminal lawyer Deepak Paradkar – who U.S. prosecutors allege accepted “cash drops” and a luxury watch while serving as a high-level fixer in Wedding’s network – continues to fight extradition. He has denied wrongdoing and Ontario’s top court recently rejected a bid to overturn Paradkar’s release on bail.
While the drug-smuggling routes laid out in the Wedding case largely mirror the ones presented by U.S. authorities on Tuesday in the high-profile Operation Hard Ball, the FBI says the two conspiracies bear no direct connection.
In both instances, grand jury indictments allege transnational criminal networks used transport trucks to move mass quantities of cocaine from southern California, then across the Canadian border.
“While both cases involved drug trafficking on similar routes, it’s possible there is some overlap or rivalries but Wedding is not charged in the indictment and no specific parallels are specified,” FBI spokesperson Laura Eimiller told CBC News in an email.
The U.S. charges unsealed Tuesday point to involvement by criminal syndicates including India’s notorious Bishnoi gang, and ties to the 2023 assassination of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
The prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles told CBC News the alleged drug trafficker Gurpreet Singh charged in the case is not the Toronto-area man by the same name charged in the Wedding case.
