Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García, the Sinaloa Cartel co-founder who was arrested in 2024 after he was kidnapped in Mexico and flown to the United States, was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. on Monday, 11 months after he pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges.
Judge Brian Cogan handed down the sentence in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, saying that life imprisonment for Zambada was justified by “the uncountable amount of drugs attributed to him and the number of murders.”
Cogan — the judge who presided over the trials of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and former Mexican Security Minister Genaro García Luna — also ordered Zambada, 76, to forfeit $15 billion in drug trafficking-related profits and assets.
The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) noted in a statement that Zambada had “pleaded guilty to being a principal leader of a continuing criminal enterprise and a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charge.”
Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said that El Mayo’s sentence to life in prison marked “the end of his reign over the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most violent and deadly drug cartels in history.”
“He will never again inflict carnage, corrupt public officials, or traffic deadly drugs into our communities that ruin Americans and their families,” Duva said.
“El Mayo’s conviction is historic, and it reflects the Justice Department’s commitment to the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations that threaten American lives. To those who remain: we will find you, we will prosecute you, and you, too, will face substantial time in prison,” he said.
It has not yet been determined where Zambada will serve his life sentence. Earlier this month, Frank A. Perez, the drug trafficker’s lawyer, argued in a letter to Cogan that his client needs — and deserves — to be incarcerated in a prison where he can receive adequate medical care for his various health issues.
Perez argued that Zambada should be incarcerated in a prison where his health issues can be effectively treated because he pleaded guilty rather than opting to go to trial.
“In taking full responsibility for his wrongdoing, Mr. Zambada’s comportment has differed markedly from that of other foreign organized crime figures who have been brought to this country through extradition, including his former partner in the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin ‘Chapo’ Guzmán, who went through an 11-week jury trial seven years ago,” wrote the lawyer, who asserted that El Mayo’s “approach benefitted the system by reducing the logjam of justice.”
CNN reported that the judge on Monday “revealed sealed medical records, which show Zambada is experiencing declining cognitive abilities and other potentially progressive medical conditions.”
“While prosecutors argued he can receive medical care within the federal prison system, the judge said the Bureau of Prisons should carefully consider his health when deciding where he will serve his sentence,” CNN wrote.
The sentencing of Zambada came almost two years after he was kidnapped in Sinaloa by Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of Sinaloa Cartel co-founder “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is serving a life sentence in the Florence Supermax prison in Colorado. After his kidnapping on July 25, 2024, Zambada was forced onto a private plane and flown to a small airport in New Mexico, where he and Guzmán López were arrested by U.S. authorities. The Sinaloa Cartel kingpin — the father of 16 children, according to his lawyer — had never previously been arrested during his long criminal career.
The Mexican government under both former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and President Claudia Sheinbaum has asserted that the U.S. government played a role in the capture of El Mayo.
U.S. authorities, including former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar, denied that was the case, but in light of a journalist’s recent assertion that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation had admitted involvement in the capture of Zambada, Mexican authorities believe Salazar lied.
The kidnapping of El Mayo triggered a major escalation of a long-running feud between the “Los Mayos” and “Los Chapitos” factions of the Sinaloa Cartel. The former is led by Ismael “Mayito Flaco” Zambada, El Mayo’s son, while the latter is led by sons of El Chapo, namely Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar. Two other “Chapitos,” Joaquín and Ovidio, are in U.S. custody, as is another son of El Mayo, Vicente Zambada.
The battle between “Los Mayos and “Los Chapitos” has claimed well over 2,000 lives in Sinaloa since September 2024, while thousands more have disappeared in the troubled northern state in the same period.
El Mayo’s courtroom message: ‘There is no future in violence’
Before his life sentence was handed down, an apparently contrite Zambada, dressed in brown and orange prison garb, addressed the U.S. federal court and accepted responsibility for the crimes he committed during his lengthy criminal career.
CNN reported that he “apologized to the countless people and families harmed by his actions and said he wasn’t pleading guilty to hide what he had done, but because he knew it was wrong.”
“He urged young people not to follow his path,” CNN reported, noting that Zambada said:
“Choose a different path. There is no future in violence. It only leads to prison and death. Violence must end in Mexico and elsewhere. Too many lives are being lost. No one wins.”
Asked about those remarks at her Tuesday morning press conference, President Sheinbaum indicated that she agreed with them before highlighting the government’s efforts to address the root causes of crime. However, she declined to explicitly endorse Zambada’s message given that it came from a convicted drug trafficker and leader of one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations.
DOJ: Sinaloa Cartel ‘regularly used brutal violence’ under El Mayo’s leadership
In its statement, the DOJ said that Zambada’s “rise to power began with the [Sinaloa] Cartel’s inception and ended with his arrest in July 2024.”
“Previously known as the Mexican Federation, the Cartel is a drug trafficking organization based in Sinaloa, Mexico, that since approximately the late 1980s has imported lethal quantities of narcotics – including, among others, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and fentanyl – into the United States and laundered billions of dollars in drug proceeds back to Mexico,” the DOJ said.
The Justice Department said that under Zambada’s leadership, the Sinaloa Cartel “recently branched out into the production and trafficking of fentanyl, including by purchasing fentanyl precursor chemicals from Chinese companies and producing many thousands of kilograms of fentanyl in laboratories both in rural areas and major cities in Mexico for distribution in the United States.”
“… Zambada García has devoted his efforts over decades to growing, increasing, and enhancing the power of the Cartel, and to growing his individual power and position in the Cartel after his partner El Chapo was captured in 2016. Under Zambada García’s leadership, the Cartel regularly used brutal violence, intimidation, and murder to silence potential witnesses and dissuade law enforcement from performing its duties,” the DOJ said.
The Justice Department said that Zambada “has operated with impunity at the highest levels of the Mexican drug trafficking world while being assured of his continued success and safety from arrest through his payment of bribes to Mexican government officials and law enforcement officers.”
“He controlled those corrupt officials and officers who protected his workers and drug shipments as his drugs were transported across Mexico and into the United States,” the DOJ said.
“Numerous witnesses have testified, including at the trials of El Chapo and corrupt former Mexican Secretary of Public Security Genaro García Luna, that corruption at all levels was necessary to allow the Zambada Garcia’s criminal enterprise to function so effectively at such a large scale.”
Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said that Zambada “spent nearly four decades poisoning American communities to make billions of dollars in profit and ordering the murders of anyone who stood in his way.”
“He will spend the rest of his life in a U.S. prison, exactly where he belongs,” Nocella said.
The Sinaloa Cartel Zambada formerly led is one of eight Mexican criminal organizations that have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. government.
Source: Mexico News Daily
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