ISMAEL “El Mayo” Zambada, a co-founder and alleged current leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, is now in U.S. custody, according to the Justice Department.
Joaquin Guzman Lopez, the son of cartel founder Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and another alleged cartel leader, is also in federal custody, Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
The two men face multiple charges related to their leadership of the cartel’s criminal operations, including a “lethal fentanyl production and distribution network,” Garland said.
A US diplomatic source with direct knowledge of the case has previously confirmed that Zambada is in US custody.
The Sinaloa Cartel, named after the Mexican state where the gang was formed, is one of the most powerful drug trafficking groups in the world, known for smuggling fentanyl, methamphetamine and heroin into the United States.
The latest indictment of Zambada, one of the most notorious drug traffickers in Mexican history, came in February. He was charged with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute a substance containing fentanyl, according to the U.S. Justice Department.
Also read: US Military Weapons Allegedly Smuggled to Mexico
Guzman’s name was removed from the renewed indictment filed this year because of his 2018 conviction, federal prosecutors said.
From 1989-2024, Zambada imported and distributed “large quantities of narcotics,” generating billions of dollars in profits, according to the February indictment.
Federal prosecutors said he hired people to establish “transportation routes and warehouses” to import and store narcotics, along with hitmen, or sicarios, to carry out kidnappings and killings in Mexico “as revenge against rivals who threatened the cartel.”
Guzman Lopez’s father was convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn in 2018 and sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years, the Justice Department said. But Zambada continued to evade capture while running the cartel.
Guzman senior bribed prison guards to smuggle him out and escaped from prison in 2001. He was previously arrested in 1993 on murder and drug charges. (CNN/Z-3)
#Cartel #Founders #Ismael #Mayo #Zambada #Joaquin #Guzman #Lopez #Arrested
