Former Mexican drug kingpin Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada pleads guilty to US charges

26/8/2025 6:20

Former Mexican drug kingpin Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada pleaded guilty on Monday to U.S. charges related to his decades-long leadership of the violent

Sinaloa cartel and its role in flooding the U.S. with drugs, including cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl.



Zambada, the alleged co-founder of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn 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.



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.



He agreed to plead guilty after the Justice Department this month said it would not seek the death penalty for Zambada or Rafael Caro Quintero, another septuagenarian alleged Mexican drug lord facing U.S. charges.



Zambada was arrested in July 2024 alongside Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of Guzman's sons, after the plane in which they were traveling landed at a small airstrip in New Mexico.