Two Mexican drug kingpins, including the son of notorious cartel boss El Chapo, have been arrested and are in US custody.
Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada, the co-founder of the Sinaloa drug cartel, and Joaquín Guzmán López surrendered to American law enforcement on Thursday.
Zambada, 76, founded the Sinaloa Cartel along with now-jailed drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, and faces a litany of indictments for crimes relating to drug trafficking and organized crime in the US.
Joaquín Guzmán Lopez is one of El Chapo’s sons and was elevated to the cartel’s top leadership in 2017 when his father was extradited to the US.
El Mayo’ [(eft) has led the Sinaloa Cartel’s day-to-day operations while battling diabetes since Joaquin ‘ El Chapo ‘ Guzman (right) was arrested in 2017
Joaquín Guzmán Lopez is one of El Chapo’s sons and was elevated to the cartel’s top leadership in 2017 when his father was extradited to the US
The pair were arrested in El Paso, Texas, after getting off a private plane that was flown in from Mexico by the FBI.
Zambada though the plane was headed south, farther into Mexico, to inspect a secret airfield for drug planes, but it actually went north to the US after Lopez double-crossed him, sources told DailyMail.com
Lopez cut a deal with American law enforcement to surrender and turn in Zambada at the same time, the sources said.
What prompted Lopez turn himself in after years as most-wanted, and to take Zambada down with him, is unclear.
Zambada lived a simple life behind the scenes at his El Alamo compound, in contrast to El Chapo’s larger than life persona, and was suffering from diabetes.
He was reportedly in communication with American law enforcement for the past three years at least, discussing the possibility of surrendering, but neve did.
Zambada said in 2010 in a rare interview ‘I’d like to think so, that I’d kill myself’ if he faced police capture.
Lopez is expected to face the Federal District Court in Chicago in coming days, and Zambada will go to New York.
The pair were arrested in El Paso, Texas , after getting off a private plane that was flown in from Mexico by the FBI
Zambada founded the Sinaloa Cartel along with El Chapo, and faces a litany of indictments for crimes relating to drug trafficking and organized crime in the US
The Justice Department earlier put an up to $15 million bounty on Zambada’s head, for any information leading to his arrest or conviction
Attorney-General Merrick Garland called the cartel one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world as he detailed the arrests.
‘El Mayo and Guzmán López join a growing list of Sinaloa Cartel leaders and associates whom the Justice Department is holding accountable in the US,’ he said.
Garland said others from the cartel now behind bars included El Chapo and another of his sons and alleged leader of the Cartel, Ovidio Guzmán López.
The alleged main hitman of the cartel, Néstor Isidro ‘El Nini’ Pérez Salas, was also in American custody, he said.
American federal prosecutors in February charged Zambada with conspiracy to make and distribute fentanyl, but he has never been behind bars.
The US State Department earlier put an up to $15 million bounty on Zambada’s head, for any information leading to his arrest or conviction.
A $5 million bounty was offered for Lopez’s arrest.
Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán is serving a life sentence after he was arrested in the beach resort town of Mazatlan, Mexico, and extradited to the US in 2017
A $5 million bounty was offered for Lopez’s arrest
Joaquín’s brother Ovidio Guzmán López was also arrested in Mexico, and extradited to the US in September to face his own long list of charges.
After El Chapo’s extradition, his criminal empire was inherited by four of his sons – known as Los Chapitos, or Little Chapos – who took over his faction of the cartel and became some of the biggest exporters of fentanyl to the US.
El Mayo and Los Chapitos have had a fractious relationship since El Chapo’s extradition, and the arrests of the two traffickers may trigger instability or even violence in Mexico.
Garland said fentanyl was the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.
‘The Department of Justice will not rest until every leader, member, and associate of the cartels responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,’ he said.
Joaquín’s brother Ovidio Guzmán López was also arrested in Mexico , and extradited to the US in September to face his own long list of charges
Zambada helped ‘El Chapo’ construct a network that has exerted its influence in illicit markets as close as the US and Colombia, and as far as New Zealand and Russia.
They distributed cocaine, heroin and other drugs while tapping into the lucrative human trafficking business.
Under the watch of the 76-year-old, the criminal organization has been able to haul in $11 billion based on seizures and pricing provided by the Drug Enforcement Agency.
‘El Mayo’ positioned himself as one of the richest men in the narcotics, earning $3 billion since 2001, despite his aversion to showing off his wealth.
Mike Vigil, who once led the DEA’s international operations, recognized ‘El Mayo’s’ business smarts as the head of a criminal syndicate that has spread its wealth and laundered its unlawful profits through international banks and companies.
The American agency tasked with battling drug smuggling and distribution has pointed out 250 business that have benefited from the Sinaloa Cartel’s illicit earnings.
Ovidio Guzman Lopez was arrested on suspicion of drug-related charges in an operation carried out by Mexico City federal authorities
Vincente Zambada, the oldest of ‘El’Mayo’s’ three sons, is currently serving a 10-year sentence in the U.S. after he was extradited from Mexico in 2010
They included a dairy company, water park and a daycare center allegedly operated by his daughter Maria Teresa.
‘Even though he’s only had maybe an elementary-school education, he’s received a Harvard-level education from some of the most prolific, knowledgeable and astute drug lords that Mexico has ever had,’ Vigil told Bloomberg in 2018.
In a 2010 interview with Proceso, ‘El Mayo’, admitted the possibility of being arrested created a sense of ‘panic’ despite how hard to he worked to maintain a low profile in public and wouldn’t rule out committing suicide if it meant avoiding doing time in jail.
‘I don’t know if I’d have the courage to kill myself. I’d like to think so, that I’d kill myself,’ he said.
A Sinaloa Cartel faction led by the sons of El Chapo has allegedly claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 66 people in the northern Mexican city of Culiacán in March.
A series of narco mantas – or banners were found hanging from four highway overpasses and bridges before Tuesday morning’s rush hour traffic.
The banners insisted the abductions were in response a rash of criminal incidents orchestrated by a home invasion gang, which some claim is led by law enforcement agents.
Each display featured a banner with a message signed off with the initials of El Chapo’s son, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán, and had the pictures of the gang’s four leaders.
Narco mantas, or banners, were spotted in the Mexican city of Sinaloa and addressed the kidnapping of 66 people
Alexia Monserrath Abrego Esqueda, one of five university students murdered by the cartel in Zacatecas, Mexico, in February, 2022
El Chapo, meanwhile, pleaded to have his his phone call and visitation rights reinstated at the ADX Florence super maximum security prison in Colorado.
The 67-year-old co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, who once boasted about being behind the killing of 3,000 people, moaned that he has been feeling lonely ever since his rights as a prisoner were stripped away in a letter he penned on March 20.
His visitation rights and phone privileges – previously two calls a month – were canceled out when he was convicted, and his appeal was denied in April.
‘Sorry to bother you again with the request that I have asked you before with regards to my wife, Emma Coronel,’ Guzmán wrote in the letter.
‘I ask that you please authorize her to visit me and to bring my daughters to visit me, since my daughters can only visit me when they are on school break, since they are studying in Mexico.’
The former cartel boss showed his softer side despite proudly running a drug empire that saw thousands slaughtered – and millions more affected by his illegal wares.
The former kingpin spends 23 hours locked in a 7-by-12-foot concrete cell with double doors in a section dubbed ‘Range 13.’
He is supervised round-the-clock and he is prohibited from mingling with the inmate population.
Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán penned a letter to federal judge Brian Cogan in New York requesting that his wife be allowed to visit him in prison and that the two 15-minute phone calls with the couple’s 12-year-old twin daughters be reinstated
The former kingpin spends 23 hours locked in a 7-by-12-foot concrete cell with double doors in a section dubbed ‘Range 13.’
Guzmán has often complained of the jail conditions ever since he was found guilty in by a federal jury in February 2019 on 10 counts that included drug trafficking money laundering and the use of a fire arm to carry out crimes.
Guzmán was once consider the most powerful drug trafficker in the world – after Colombian Pablo Escobar.
He was extradited from Mexico in January 2017 after he was recaptured in January 2016 following his second prison escape in June 2015 via a tunnel that his organization had constructed underneath the jail.
Before that, he had been on the run for 13 years after he snuck out of prison on a laundry cart in January 2001.
His wife was released from US federal custody in September 2023 after she completed 31 months of a 36-month sentence that was handed down by a Washington DC federal court in November 2021 after she pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk