That flexing Ryan Wedding Instagram account appears to be AI
Sorry to disappoint the 52,000 people who follow it
If you’ve been following the story of former Canadian Olympian turned alleged drug lord Ryan Wedding and you love an Instagram mess, your algorithm has probably served you content from a user known as BossRyanW.
The account has been posting images that establish an appearance of privileged surroundings—there’s Wedding about to get into a helicopter, a nice watch attached to a hand giving a thumbs up and, for good measure, a gold medal around the neck of a Daffy Duck sculpture, captioned, “The one I managed to rescue,” seemingly in reference to a police raid.
Related: The FBI seized a $13-million Mercedes in connection to its Ryan Wedding investigation
Many on social media seemed to believe the account was being run by Wedding himself, who is famously a fugitive, hiding from the FBI. “Bro rage baiting the FBI is insane,” said one commenter on the page. Others were more supportive: “As a fellow Canadian, keep going!” said another.
The RCMP began looking for Wedding in 2015, and last year, he was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list due to allegations of drug trafficking and murder.
It turns out, according to a closer look taken by the CBC, that “multiple red flags suggest an imposter has been posting images created using AI.”
The CBC’s analysis of the images explains why the outlet’s journalists firmly believe they are fake. They still did their due diligence and sought an interview with the poster behind BossRyanW. When asked if the individual running the account was actually Wedding, the user replied, “Yes, brother.”
Related: Another suspect has been arrested in connection to the $20-million Pearson gold heist
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
