Zambada is noticed as the group’s strategist and dealmaker and a significantly less flamboyant determine than Guzmán.
This significant-profile capture may possibly discourage other criminals and disrupt the operations of other cartels which have relied about the Sinaloa cartel’s influence and assets.
Zambada has become held in an undisclosed location in Texas but will soon be moved to New York, where his scenario might be handed to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn in a similar courthouse where El Chapo was tried and convicted in 2019.
Under Zambada’s leadership, the Sinaloa cartel expanded its functions, leveraging subtle smuggling approaches and forming alliances with other felony companies.
Late Thursday night, less than the duvet of darkness, federal brokers within a coordinated operation apprehended Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. The operation was a end result of many years of meticulous planning and intelligence accumulating through the DEA, FBI, and also other regulation enforcement agencies.
The 76-calendar year-outdated experienced applied a wheelchair in a court look in Texas past thirty day period. But Perez stated immediately after courtroom Friday that Zambada was healthier and “in great spirits.”
Zambada also pleaded not guilty get more info to the costs at an earlier courtroom visual appeal in Texas. His future court visual appeal is scheduled for Oct. 31.
The founder of the Sinaloa Cartel returns into a Texas court, accused of drug trafficking, income laundering and at the least four murders linked to his prison functions. The prosecution is inquiring the choose for more time and for the situation being recognized as ‘unconventional and complex’
” court docket documents clearly show Ovidio is scheduled for any court docket visual appeal on September thirty. An anonymous source cited by the LA moments indicated he had been moved to protective custody as an alternative to introduced.
El Mayo proved himself remarkably adept at evading arrest. His deep connections in government as well as the local population in Sinaloa assisted him invest about forty decades while in the drug trafficking company without having ever seeing The within of a jail cell.
In courtroom As well as in a letter before towards the judge, prosecutors explained Zambada presided around an enormous and violent Procedure, having an arsenal of military services-quality weapons, A non-public protection power which was Practically like a military, plus a corps of “sicarios,” or hitmen, who performed assassinations, kidnappings and torture.
Attorney basic Merrick Garland describes the drug ring inside the statement as "Just about the most violent and strong drug trafficking companies on the planet."
That case was the results of an ongoing war amongst rival cartels in Mexico. The existing, up-to-date costs against El Mayo now contain conspiracy, functioning a continuing criminal business, drug trafficking and cash laundering.
“They were being associates,” Jesús explained in the cartel leaders, describing their collaboration in different functions, including aiding El Chapo’s escape from a higher-safety jail in 2001.