Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, 77, pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges and running a criminal enterprise. He was arrested in Texas in July 2024 after arriving on a plane with Joaquin Guzman Lopez. Zambada helped form the Sinaloa cartel in the late 1980s and controlled production and shipment of heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl from Mexico into the United States. US prosecutors described a violent, militarized cartel with private security forces and sicarios that carried out assassinations, kidnappings and torture. The cartel moved tons of cocaine from Colombia and later fentanyl produced from Chinese precursor chemicals. Zambada began as a farmer and small-time trafficker and expanded operations as a logistics expert in the Golden Triangle region.
The Mexican drug lord Ismael El Mayo Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges as well as running a criminal enterprise on Monday, more than a year since he was arrested in Texas after what has been described as a kidnapping. I recognize the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people in the United States and Mexico, the 77-year-old Zambada said in court through a Spanish-language interpreter. I apologize for all of it, and I take responsibility for my actions.
Prosecutors said that under the leadership of Guzman and Zambada, the Sinaloa cartel developed into the largest drug-trafficking organization in the world, controlling the movement of tons of cocaine from Colombia to the US, heroin from Mexico's mountain states, and later fentanyl produced from Chinese precursor chemicals. A former associate of the Juarez cartel, Zambada operated within an area of Mexico known as the Golden Triangle, encompassed by the states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua.
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