Ismael El Mayo Zambada pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn to racketeering conspiracy and running a continuing criminal enterprise tied to the Sinaloa cartel. Prosecutors said the enterprise imported and distributed massive quantities of cocaine, heroin and fentanyl to the United States. He acknowledged decades-long leadership alongside Joaquin El Chapo Guzman and described underlings who built relationships with Colombian cocaine producers, oversaw importation by boat and plane, and smuggled drugs across the US–Mexico border. He acknowledged that people working for him paid bribes to Mexican officials. He apologized through a Spanish-language interpreter after the Justice Department declined to seek the death penalty.
Charges relate to his decades-long involvement in leading the Sinaloa cartel and its role in funnelling drugs to the US. Zambada, the alleged co-founder of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York to charges that he engaged in a racketeering conspiracy and ran a continuing criminal enterprise that prosecutors said was responsible for importing and distributing massive quantities of drugs.
Zambada agreed to plead guilty after the US Justice Department this month said it would not seek the death penalty for him or for Rafael Caro Quintero, another septuagenarian alleged Mexican drug lord facing US charges. I recognise the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people in the United States and Mexico, he said through a Spanish-language interpreter. I apologise for all of it, and I take responsibility for my actions.
Those charges stemmed from his decades-long role leading the Sinaloa cartel alongside imprisoned drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado. US law enforcement officers stand outside a federal courthouse, ahead of the plea hearing of alleged Sinaloa cartel co-founder Ismael El Mayo' Zambada on drug-trafficking charges, in Brooklyn, New York, the US [Brendan McDermid/Reuters]
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