One of the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán admitted for the first time in a Chicago courtroom Monday that he orchestrated the dramatic kidnapping of elusive Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in 2024 and delivered both himself and his quarry to U.S. authorities in the hopes of leniency.
In pleading guilty to narcotics trafficking charges, Joaquín Guzmán López offered new details in his shocking move to betray Zambada, which made global headlines and brought down one of the most wanted figures in the world.
According to his plea, Guzmán López arranged for a meeting in Sinaloa, Mexico, with Zambada — identified only as “Individual A” — by telling him he was needed to resolve a dispute. When Zambada arrived on July 25, 2024, Guzmán López brought him to a private room where he’d secretly removed the glass from a floor-to-ceiling window, according to the plea.
Once Guzmán López had closed and locked the door, armed men entered through the window and handcuffed Zambada and put a bag over his head, according to the plea. Zambada was then loaded into a pickup truck and driven to a nearby airstrip, where he was forced onto a private plane with Guzmán López, according to the plea.
On the plane, Guzmán López gave Zambada a drink laced with a sedative and also drank some of it himself before the flight took off for the U.S., according to the plea. They were both taken into custody by U.S. authorities after landing in New Mexico.
Guzmán López admitted in the plea that he orchestrated the kidnapping “in the hopes” of leniency from the U.S. government in cases against himself and his brothers. He acknowledged in the agreement that the U.S. had not authorized the kidnapping or condoned it, and that “he will not receive cooperation credit for the kidnapping,” nor will his brothers.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Erskine did say in court Monday, however, that in exchange for Guzmán López’s ongoing cooperation in other matters in his case, prosecutors will recommend a sentence of less than mandatory life behind bars.
Guzmán López, 39, was charged in Chicago’s federal court with helping his father and brothers run the notoriously violent Sinaloa cartel, importing thousands of tons of narcotics into the U.S., bribing public officials and using murder and kidnapping to amass and maintain power.
He pleaded guilty Monday to one count each of entering into a drug trafficking conspiracy and participating in continuing criminal enterprise. U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman did not immediately set a sentencing date, instead asking the parties for a status update on June 1.
Zambada, meanwhile, pleaded guilty in New York in August to partnering with El Chapo to lead the Sinaloa cartel, one of the most violent and powerful drug-trafficking organizations in the world, importing thousands of tons of narcotics into the U.S., through decades of violence and corruption.
Zambada is set to be sentenced Jan. 12 in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.
During Monday’s hearing, Guzmán López stood at a lectern dressed in orange jail clothes and answered questions in English in a soft voice. During routine questioning, he told Coleman he was taking medication for anxiety and had a college degree. When the judge asked him what he did for a living, Guzmán López said quickly: “Drug trafficking.”
“Oh, that’s your job,” Coleman replied as others in the courtroom chuckled. “All right — there you go.”
Guzmán López was among four sons of El Chapo, collectively known as the “Chapitos,” charged in a superseding indictment unsealed in Chicago in 2023 with assuming day-to-day control of the Sinaloa cartel after their father’s arrest in 2016. The indictment accused the sons of orchestrating the shipment of thousands of pounds of cocaine, marijuana and other drugs into the U.S. by rail, road and through tunnels and other means.
Guzmán López’s younger brother, Ovidio, pleaded guilty in July. Two other brothers remain at large.
In his 35-page plea agreement, Guzmán López admitted he and his brothers furthered the conspiracy by bribing public officials and using guns and other dangerous weapons to commit violence, including murder, kidnapping and assault “against law enforcement, rival drug traffickers and members of their own trafficking organization.”
Under the terms of the agreement, prosecutors said if Guzmán López continues to cooperate, they will recommend a “downward departure” at sentencing of a term less than life behind bars.
The only other sentencing stipulation in the agreement as to sentencing said prosecutors would not be recommending any less than the 10-year minimum term on the criminal enterprise count.
Guzmán López also agreed to forfeit $80 million as part of the plea.
In his plea over the summer, Ovidio Guzmán López admitted having a role in three specific killings, including the December 2018 kidnapping and murder of Jesús Antonio Muñoz Parra — the father of one of their cartel rivals — in Sinaloa, and the October 2021 kidnapping and murder of another cartel operative, Geovanni Hurtado Vicente, also known as “Amigo,” in Jalisco.
Guzmán López also pleaded guilty to participating in the May 2021 killing of Mario Nungaray Bobadilla, who was shot to death outside his home in Phoenix.
The indictment was part of the same case originally filed in Chicago in 2009 against El Chapo himself as well as many of his top henchmen, which is widely considered the largest narcotics case ever brought here.
Those charges alleged the Sinaloa cartel used jumbo jets, submarines and tunnels to smuggle massive amounts of drugs into the U.S., much of which was later distributed in wholesale quantities in Chicago. The cartel members then laundered billions of dollars in proceeds back to Mexico.
As it has played out over the past decade and a half, the case has revealed how, in many respects, the Chicago area serves as a drug trafficker’s dream.
Its central location and vast transportation networks have made the city a pivotal hub of narcotics distribution, authorities and federal witnesses have said. Thousands of tons of drugs have moved through the city over the decades, hidden in vehicle compartments, in suburban stash houses and semitrailer loads of everything from avocados to live sheep.
The cartels have also made use of the city’s entrenched street gangs, which have proven more than capable of breaking down the product and delivering it to the streets.
Among the cartel’s top distributors were Chicago twins Pedro and Margarito Flores, who rose from the obscurity of the Little Village neighborhood to working directly for El Chapo before cutting a secret cooperation deal with the government.
The twins’ decision to cooperate with federal authorities in 2008 culminated with Pedro Flores testifying against El Chapo at his trial in New York in December 2018.
El Chapo was convicted in New York in 2019 and is serving a life sentence at a maximum security federal prison in Colorado.
