NEW YORK— Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the 75-year-old former co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, has suddenly changed his mind and pled guilty to federal drug trafficking and racketeering charges. Zambada, who had been avoiding the police for more than 20 years, showed up in a Brooklyn courtroom and apologized for the damage his group had done.
Zambada remarked through a Spanish-language interpreter, “I know how much illegal drugs have hurt people in the US, Mexico, and other places.” “I am sorry for everything that has happened because of what I did. I take full responsibility for my part in it.”
The plea deal, which came two weeks after prosecutors vowed not to ask for the capital penalty, means that Zambada will have to spend at least the rest of his life in jail. He will be sentenced on January 13 and will also have to pay billions of dollars in fines.
U.S. law enforcement had a big victory with Zambada’s guilty plea. Pam Bondi, the U.S. Attorney General, flew to New York to make the announcement and dubbed it a “landmark victory.” She said, “Zambada will die in a US federal prison, where he belongs.”
Zambada was thought to be the brains behind the Sinaloa cartel for years, working with the more flashy Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Zambada told the court that the cartel, which he and Guzmán ran, had become the biggest drug trafficking group in the world, making hundreds of millions of dollars a year and paying off Mexican officials to do business without any problems. He said he was in charge of moving at least 1.5 million kg of cocaine from 1980 until he was arrested last year. He also said that the cartel was involved in the trafficking of methamphetamine and fentanyl.
Last year, Zambada was caught in Texas after flying in on a private plane with Joaquín Guzmán López, one of Guzmán’s sons. Zambada says he was kidnapped in Mexico and transferred to the U.S. without his will. His arrest and Guzmán López’s arrest led to a brutal power struggle in the Sinaloa region between different factions of the cartel.
Frank Perez, Zambada’s lawyer, said in court that the plea deal does not obligate his client to work with government investigators, even if Zambada apologized. This makes his case different from many other well-known drug trafficking cases, where agreeing to cooperate is generally part of a plea deal.
The guilty plea ends the public legal chapter for the two co-founders of the Sinaloa cartel. In 2019, Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison in the same Brooklyn courthouse after a long trial. Now that both men are in jail, the future leadership of the cartel and the ongoing power battles inside it are still major concerns for law enforcement on both sides of the border.