The GTA ‘cocaine_lawyer’ the FBI says advised Ryan Wedding to kill a federal witness

CTV’s Kamil Karamali has the latest on the former Olympian Ryan Wedding being accused of running a drug trafficking ring and ordering dozens of murders.

A high-profile Toronto-area lawyer has become a defendant in the case against Ryan Wedding, a former Team Canada Olympic athlete accused of running a sophisticated, multi-billion-dollar drug trafficking network.

Deepak Paradkar, who served as Wedding’s legal counsel, was arrested Tuesday in connection with a 54-page, nine-count federal grand jury indictment which was unsealed by the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday.

• ‘The modern day iteration of Pablo Escobar’: Reward for Ryan Wedding’s arrest upgraded to US$15 million

It’s alleged that he was a key part of Wedding’s operation, which used planes, boats and long-haul, semi-trucks to transport tons of cocaine each year from Colombia, through Mexico, and onto the streets of the U.S. and Canada.

But the biggest bombshell accusation levelled against the 62-year-old criminal lawyer is that he allegedly advised Wedding to murder a key federal witness who was set to testify in the case.

“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,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, of the Central District of California, said Wednesday.

“He was wrong.”

Paradkar was one of seven Canadians arrested on Tuesday. He’s also been sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for his alleged role in the criminal syndicate.

Here’s everything we know about Paradkar and the allegations against him:

‘If you kill this witness, the case would be dismissed’

Paradkar, whose aliases include “cocaine_lawyer,” “Deepaj Emergency,” and “Descartes” had been practising criminal law for nearly three decades according to a LinkedIn page that bears his name prior to his arrest on Tuesday.

“I am a criminal trial lawyer. I have 28 years of experience conducting high profile criminal cases, including murder, organized crime, drugs,” the now-deleted profile reads.

A call to Paradkar’s office for comment was not returned.

It’s unclear when exactly Paradkar became involved in the alleged criminal conspiracy, but his name appears alongside Wedding’s in count one of the indictment (among others) as being involved in the operation which began “no later than on or about December 7, 2011, and continuing until on or about October 28, 2025.”

While Wedding remains at large, Andrew Clark (a Canadian described as Wedding’s second-in-command who is currently in U.S. custody) and several others were arrested before or after a separate 16-count superseding indictment was unsealed in October 2024.

On or after that date, the indictment alleges, Paradkar told Wedding and Clark that if a key witness in the case (referred to as Victim A) was killed, the charges against them and related extradition proceedings would “necessarily be dismissed.”

“Defendant Paradkar advised defendant Wedding and Clark to murder Victim A so that they would avoid extradition from Mexico on the criminal charges…” the indictment reads.

Some time on or after that date, Wedding then allegedly placed a bounty of up to US$5 million on the witness, who was not named, in exchange for any person who could locate and kill him.

In November 2024, one of the co-defendants, 31-year-old Mississauga resident Gursewak Singh Bal, was paid CAD$10,000 by another alleged member of the criminal enterprise, 33-year-old Calgary resident Allistair Chapman, to post an image of the witness and his wife to his Instagram and a website he co-founded and operated called “The Dirty News.”

The witness was later located in Medellín, Colombia, and ambushed by a shooter who arrived at a restaurant on January 31 on a motorcycle. He was shot five times in the head and died instantly. A photographer working for the alleged criminal network took a picture of his corpse at the restaurant so Wedding could “circulate the photograph throughout the criminal underworld as a warning,” the indictment states.

The indictment alleges that Wedding informed Clark that the witness was dead and sent him a photograph. Clark was in custody in Mexico awaiting extradition proceedings at the time.

“His lawyer advised them to kill this witness. His lawyer told him, ‘If you kill this witness, the case would be dismissed.’ That lawyer is now in custody, and he’ll be extradited and brought to justice here in the United States. So, all this to say it doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, when the United States government and this Department of Justice decides we’re going after someone we’re going to get you, America always gets its guy,” Essayli said.

Paradkar was arrested at his home on Tuesday and initially refused to come out, Essayli added.

“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 or 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 enforcement and to murder witnesses, we can’t have that stance. It was very important to us that the lawyer be charged and the lawyer be brought to justice.”

The DOJ says an immigration action is being initiated against Paradkar’s daughter, Madeline Paradkar, 27, who is also an attorney and is residing in Chicago. The details of that action were not revealed.

Paradkar retains counsel for co-defendants so Wedding and Clark can monitor their cases

The indictment alleges that Wedding’s drug ring used Los Angeles as a hub to store narcotics and on April 9, 2024, one of his co-defendants, Canadian Rakhim Ibragimov, was caught transferring 375 kilograms of cocaine to his car.

Officials allege Paradkar arranged for local legal counsel in LA to represent Ibragimov the next month so that he could monitor the case for Wedding and Clark.

• READ MORE: GTA lawyer, Toronto jewelry business owner among those accused of helping Ryan Wedding’s criminal enterprise

Then, on August 1, another co-defendant, Juan Manuel Quiroz Jimenez, a Mexican citizen and California resident, was caught by police with roughly 201 kilograms of cocaine. The following day, Clark allegedly paid Paradkar US$5,000 to obtain his arrest report.

The indictment alleges that Paradkar then sent screenshots of email correspondence with local counsel in Los Angeles regarding Jimenez’s case to Clark.

Wedding and Clark able to eavesdrop on two other co-defendants cases

Just two weeks before the DOJ unsealed its first indictment in connection with Wedding’s alleged drug empire, two of his alleged transporters, Canadians Maninderjit Singh and Dhillon Ranjodh Singh, were caught by police in Hazen, Arkansas, with 521 kilograms of cocaine between them.

“On October 1, 2024, via Threema (an encrypted messaging app) and using coded language, Clark asked defendant Wedding if defendant Wedding wanted defendant Paradkar to monitor Dhillon and Singh’s arrests, and defendant Wedding responded affirmatively, suggesting that an American lawyer be used to obfuscate defendant Paradkar’s involvement,” the indictment reads.

The indictment goes on to say that Paradkar, who was part of a separate Threema group chat titled “911 arkansa,” asked another co-defendant who was also in the group for Dhillon and Singh’s drivers’ licences. He said he would “look into it” and asked if there were “any relatives” he should contact.

Paradkar was able to locate Singh, who was in prison, but could not locate Dhillon. The lawyer then allegedly asked the co-defendant in the Threema chat to send him Singh’s brother’s phone number and tell him that he was Singh’s lawyer so that he could get his arrest report.

“On or before October 2, 2024, defendant Paradkar called Singh and asked him questions relating to his arrest while Clark covertly listened in,” the indictment states. It’s unclear what was said.

The next day, officials say Clark and the other co-defendant in the chat discussed murdering Dhillon. Paradkar advised them to discuss the matter on a different chat without him present and to “delete any and all discussion of the murder plot.”Paradkar is also accused of then sending discovery documents from Dhillon and Singh’s arrest to Wedding and Clark. When Paradkar was able to get in touch with Dhillon over the phone, Clark was also covertly listening in.

Paradkar sends Wedding and Clark screenshots of OPP evidence in connection with deadly Caledon, Ont., triple shooting

In October 2024, U.S. law enforcement linked Wedding and Clark to a triple shooting in Caledon, Ont., that left a couple that was visiting from India dead.

They allegedly ordered the hit on who they thought was a co-conspirator whom they believed stole 300 kilograms of cocaine from them.

On Nov. 20, 2023, members of the criminal enterprise entered the property and encountered Jagtar Singh Sidhu, 57, Harbhajan Kaur Sidhu, 55, and their daughter Jaspreet.

The co-conspirators believed the three inhabitants of the home were related to the individual who stole the cocaine and shot them. Jaspreet survived, her parents did not.

Police have said the victims were “completely innocent” and shot in a case of mistaken identity.

The indictment alleges that Paradkar sent Clark screenshots of evidence obtained by the Ontario Provincial Police during its investigation into the shooting.

Paradkar represented Dellen Millard, Yahoo breach hacker

Before he was indicted, Paradkar represented some high-profile individuals in other criminal cases.

That includes Dellen Millard, who was convicted alongside close friend Mark Smich in the killings of Laura Babcock in 2012 and Tim Bosma in 2013.

Paradkar withdrew from representing Millard after he was accused of sending jailhouse letters from Millard to his girlfriend Christina Noudga, who was on a court-ordered no-contact list at the time.

The 65 letters were seized by police in Noudga’s bedroom and photographs of the seizure showed numerous open yellow envelopes with “Deepak Paradkar Solicitor Client Privilege” written on them.

Paradkar denied any wrongdoing at the time.

“My position is I’ve never done anything ethically wrong or been involved. I really have nothing to do with this issue,” he told The Canadian Press.

Paradkar also represented Karim Baratov, a Kazakhstan-born Hamilton hacker who was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a Yahoo breach orchestrated by a Russian intelligence agency.

In 2017, Paradkar was reprimanded by the Law Society of Ontario for the content he was posting to his Instagram, specifically a photo of him and a client with the caption “Cocaine_lawyer 2.5 kilos of cocaine charges dropped”. CTV News reached out to the Criminal Lawyers Association for a comment on the allegations against Paradkar but did not receive a response.