Joaquin Guzman Lopez, the son of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, has pleaded guilty in a Chicago court to two counts of drug trafficking and organized crime for his role in Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa Cartel, reversing his original not guilty plea after his arrest last year.
Guzman Lopez, wearing an orange jumpsuit and matching shoes, spoke quietly in court Monday. At the beginning of the hearing, Judge Sharon Coleman of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois asked what he did for work.
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“Drug trafficking,” Guzmán López replied.
“Oh, that’s your job,” Coleman said, laughing.
According to reports, with the guilty plea, Guzman Lopez is expected to avoid life in prison as part of a deal in which he cooperates with US prosecutors and pays $80 million to represent the proceeds of his crimes.
Nevertheless, according to Andrew Erskine, a lawyer representing the federal government, he faces at least 10 years in prison.
According to reports, Guzman Lopez will be sentenced by a judge at a later date, and will have no opportunity to appeal the sentence as part of the plea deal.
“The government has been very fair with Joaquín so far,” Guzmán López’s defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman said after the hearing.
“I appreciate the fact that the Mexican government did not intervene,” Lichtman said.
According to a Chicago Tribune report, in the 35-page agreement, Guzman Lopez admitted that he and his brothers furthered the cartel’s operations by bribing officials and deploying firearms and other weapons to commit violence targeting law enforcement, rival smugglers and even members of their own organization.
‘chapitos’
Guzmán López and his brother Ovidio, two of El Chapo’s four sons, known in Mexico as “Chapitos” or “little Chapos”, are on trial in the US and are accused of overseeing a powerful faction of the Sinaloa Cartel that they inherited from their father.
Ovidio Guzman Lopez pleaded guilty in July to two counts of drug distribution in the US and two counts of participation in a continuing criminal enterprise. He faces possible life in prison.
Two other brothers are still absconding. His father, El Chapo, was extradited to the US in 2017, and is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison.
In 2023, US federal officials described the Sinaloa Cartel’s operations as a vast network responsible for moving “staggering” amounts of fentanyl into the US.
Security was heightened at the Chicago federal courthouse as prosecutors on Monday outlined the events leading up to Guzmán López’s dramatic arrest on U.S. soil in July 2024, along with another longtime Sinaloa leader, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
The pair were arrested in Texas after they disembarked from a small private plane. Their surprise capture escalated violence in Mexico’s northern state of Sinaloa as two factions of the Sinaloa cartel clashed amid reports of a betrayal that led to arrests in the US.
Guzman Lopez admits to kidnapping ‘El Mayo’
In his plea, Guzmán López also admitted to kidnapping an unidentified man, said to be Zambada.
Erskine, the lawyer representing the federal government, described the alleged kidnapping in court, saying that Guzmán López had removed the glass from a floor-to-ceiling window.
During a meeting in the room with the unidentified man, Guzmán López allegedly had other people enter through the open window, grabbed the man, placed a bag over his head and took him to a plane. On board the plane he was zip-tied and sedated before the plane landed at a New Mexico airport near the Texas border.
Erskine said the alleged kidnapping was part of an effort by Guzmán López to show cooperation with the US government, which did not approve of his actions. He said Guzmán López would not receive cooperation credit because of the kidnapping.
Guzmán López’s information underlines some of the details that Zambada had already described in his signed letter, and which was released by his lawyer shortly after his arrest last year.
Zambada’s lawyer had said that his client had been “forcibly kidnapped” on a flight to the US. In the two-page letter, Zambada said Guzmán López asked him to attend a meeting with local politicians on July 25. Zambada claimed that El Chapo’s son had organized the meeting “to help resolve differences between political leaders.”
“The notion that I voluntarily surrendered or cooperated is completely false,” the document said.
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