Mexican drug boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez has entered a guilty plea in a major US drug trafficking and organised crime case related to Sinaloa Cartel and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors under a plea deal that could spare him a life sentence.
Wearing an orange jumpsuit and matching shoes, Guzman Lopez spoke briefly in court on Monday. Early in the hearing, Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Sharon Coleman questioned what he did for work.
“Drug trafficking,” Guzman Lopez replied.
“Oh, that’s your job,” Coleman said.
With the guilty plea, Guzman Lopez is anticipated to avoid life in prison as part of an agreement in which he cooperates with US prosecutors and pays a penalty of $80 million representing the proceeds of his crime according to reports.
Even so, federal government attorney Andrew Erskine said he could spend at least 10 years behind bars.
According to reports, Guzman Lopez will be sentenced by a court at a later date and will not be able to appeal the sentence as part of the plea agreement.
“The government has been very fair with Joaquin thus far. I do appreciate that the Mexican government didn’t interfere,” Guzman Lopez’s defence counsel, Jeffrey Lichtman remarked.
The Chicago Tribune reported that Guzman Lopez admitted in his 35-page plea agreement that he and his brothers used guns and other weapons to carry out acts of violence against law enforcement, rival traffickers, and even members of their own organisation to further the cartel’s operations.
Two of El Chapo’s four sons, Guzman Lopez and his brother Ovidio Guzman Lopez, who are referred to as the “Los Chapitos” or “little Chapos” in Mexico, are on trial in the US on charges of leading a powerful faction of the Sinaloa Cartel that they inherited from their father.
Ovidio pleaded guilty in the US in July to two counts of drug distribution and two counts of participation in a continuing criminal organisation. He is likely to get life term.
Two of the brothers are still at large. Their father, El Chapo, was extradited to the US in 2017, and is serving a life term in a maximum-security prison.
In 2023, US federal investigators described the Sinaloa cartel’s activity as a huge network responsible for transporting “staggering” volumes of fentanyl into the US.
Prosecutors described the circumstances leading up to Guzman Lopez’s capture on US territory in July 2024 alongside another longtime Sinaloa leader, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, on Monday, raising security at Chicago’s federal court.
After landing on a small private aircraft, the two were taken into custody in Texas. Their dramatic capture caused a surge in bloodshed in Mexico’s northern state of Sinaloa as two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel raged amid reports of betrayal that led to the arrests in the US.
Guzman Lopez appeared to accept kidnapping ‘El Mayo’.
He also acknowledged in his plea agreement that he abducted an unidentified person who was allegedly Zambada.
Guzman Lopez had the glass from a floor-to-ceiling window removed, according to Erskine, the federal government’s attorney, who described the alleged kidnapping in court.
Guzman Lopez allegedly had others come through the open window during a meeting with the unidentified person, grab him, cover his head with a bag, and transport him to a plane. Before the aircraft touched down at a New Mexico airstrip close to the Texas border, he was zip-tied and given sedatives.
Erskine claimed the alleged kidnapping was part of an attempt by Guzman Lopez to show cooperation with the US government, which did not condone his conduct. He claimed that due of the kidnapping, Guzman Lopez would not be given credit for cooperation.
The evidence provided by Guzman Lopez supports some of the details that Zambada had previously provided in a signed letter that his attorney released soon after his detention last year.
According to Zambada’s attorney, his client was “forcibly kidnapped” onto the US airplane. The co-founder of Sinaloa Cartel stated in the two-page letter that Guzman Lopez invited him to a meeting with local leaders on July 25. El Chapo’s son, according to Zambada, called the meeting to “help resolve differences between the political leaders.”
“The notion that I surrendered or cooperated voluntarily is completely false,” the document states.