Joaquin Guzmán Lopez, son of Capo Joaquin El Chapo Guzman pleaded guilty Monday in Northern Illinois District Court to two counts of drug trafficking and organized crime for his participation in the Sinaloa Cartel, according to national media. The 39-year-old drug trafficker also admitted for the first time to kidnapping one of his father’s historical associates, Ismail. maybe Zambada, for extradition to the United States authorities at the end of July 2024 in El Paso, Texas. This strategy also meant his surrender to Washington. Guzman Lopez thus becomes the second member of the Guzman family to cooperate with the United States government. His younger brother, Ovidio, had done so before, who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking on July 11 before the same judge, Sharon Johnson.
El Chapo’s son told the judge what Zambada’s kidnapping was like. Information previously collected Chicago Tribune He sets the scene: Guzman Lopez tells him that he needs his help to resolve the conflict, and convinces him to accompany him to the room, where they have secretly removed the windows. This is where several men enter, tie a mayo and place a sack over his head. They loaded him into a pickup truck, drove him to a nearby airstrip and forced him onto a private plane. Guzman Lopez gives him a drink laced with tranquilizers. The flight takes off with two people on board. Upon landing, they will be taken to prison. El Mayo never set foot in a prison during his criminal life, although US authorities offered a $15 million reward.
The information provided by Guzmán López confirms part of the data previously described by El Mayo in a letter signed and issued by his lawyer shortly after the arrest. In it, he said that this meeting was held on the outskirts of Culiacan. The criminal kingpin claimed that he was going to meet there with the governor of Sinaloa, Ruben Rocha Moya, and Hector Melicio Coen, the former mayor of Culiacan. Zambada claimed that Chapo’s son organized this meeting “to help resolve differences between political leaders.” “The idea that I would surrender or cooperate voluntarily is completely false,” the document said.
The statements of Guzman Lopez, for which they offered five million, are the confirmation of an act that has been planned since last Friday, when a judicial message spread on the networks announcing that the son of the great Mexican president would turn the hearing into a change of statement. Chapo’s son always kept a low profile to avoid prison. He got into organized crime early, taking advantage of capital left by the Sinaloa cartel to “invest large sums of money in purchasing marijuana in Mexico and cocaine in Colombia,” according to information from the State Department. After El Chapo’s arrest in 2017, Guzman Lopez was able to climb the ranks and become an effective agent for the criminal group.
Ovidio Guzman did just that when he pleaded guilty last July. He was arrested in January 2023 in Jesús María, near Sinaloa’s capital, Culiacan. A few years before that, in 2019, he was arrested by the authorities, but this arrest sparked a brutal response by the Sinaloa cartel to prevent them from taking him away. In September 2023, he was extradited to the United States, where, like his brother, he pleaded not guilty to all charges at his first hearings.
The surrender of Guzman Lopez’s son to Zambada led to an immediate rupture within the Sinaloa Cartel. Los Chapitos and Los Miitos factions They unleashed terror on Culiacan in the following days. The capital of Sinaloa thus became the main theater of war between the two sides. Since then, the Sinaloa Cartel has emptied its muscles in the country, a situation that has been exploited by some of its rivals, such as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the violent group that continues to export violence to different regions of the Republic.