Zambada Ends Criminal Era, Cooperating With the U.S.

The guilty plea of ​​drug trafficker Ismael Zambada García, known as “El Mayo,” in the Eastern District Court of New York could have seismic repercussions for Mexican politics and security. Although his lawyer, Frank Pérez, assures that the Mexican national will not cooperate by revealing personalities, it was the drug lord himself who, during the August 25 hearing, read a letter in which he acknowledged that he began his illicit activities in 1969 by trafficking marijuana and that for decades he bribed police, military, and political authorities in Mexico to operate with impunity.

The former leader and co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel (CDS), along with Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, known as “El Chapo,” has allegedly already provided the identities, nicknames, and social positions of the people with whom he collaborated and who protected him for so many years. Zambada agreed to hand over assets and possessions to cover the $15 billion that, according to U.S. government estimates, the criminal earned from his illegal businesses; assets he is obliged to disclose before sentencing. Therefore, the lawyer’s version may simply be a strategy, but negotiations continue so that his client, who has already escaped the death penalty, can obtain other benefits in prison.

While this happened in the U.S., in Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, who prior to the hearing indicated that she wasn’t concerned about the revelation of names of political figures, after learning what Zambada Garcia said, now not only asks for evidence, but denounces the corruption revealed:

“Well, there would have to be a complaint, right? I mean, because he can say this, but to whom was he giving money? According to what he said, there would have to be a specific complaint.

Monday, August 25, “Mayo” Zambada pleaded guilty to two charges: one for racketeering conspiracy and the other for directing a continuing criminal enterprise. Before Judge Brian Cogan of the District Court in Brooklyn, the Mexican citizen formalized the agreement he negotiated with the prosecution to avoid going to trial and gain some procedural benefits. The Sinaloa native faced 17 charges in the criminal case in New York and had seven other charges pending in El Paso, Texas, added to his plea bargain. The agreement, unlike that of Ovidio Guzmán López, does not include a clause regarding cooperation with the U.S. justice system in other cases.

The man, who could face life imprisonment for the alleged charges, admitted before Judge Cogan, prosecutors, and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents that he had led an international drug trafficking network for more than five decades that moved approximately 1.5 million kilos of cocaine, primarily to the United States. It was through reading a letter that Zambada admitted to having begun illicit business at the age of 19 and remaining in business for over 50 years, leading the Sinaloa Cartel. Initially, he distributed marijuana, but from 1980 until 2024, he trafficked other drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, to the United States.

Ismael, known by the nicknames “El Mayo,” “El Señor del Sombrero,” and “El Señor de la Montaña,” claimed that he had trusted men under his command for drug trafficking and connections with Colombian drug traffickers, having direct contact in transactions. He admitted that he had a team “with its own commander” who protected him and his family and also ensured that drug trafficking transactions were carried out. It was at this point that he claimed that from a very young age, he paid bribes to corrupt police officers, military personnel, and politicians, which allowed him to operate from the very beginning. At the end of the letter, Zambada expressed remorse, saying, “I apologize to those who have suffered because of my actions.”

Under the plea agreement for Mayo, who is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the charges that will be dismissed at sentencing, and which were part of the case in the District Court of Texas, will be charges for his involvement in money laundering, murder and drug conspiracies, and violations of state law for murder and kidnapping for conduct between January 1, 2000, and April 11, 2012.

According to U.S. authorities, Zambada García’s rise to power began with the conception of the Sinaloa Cartel and culminated with his arrest in July 2024. Formerly known as the “Federation,” the cartel has imported lethal quantities of narcotics, including cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and fentanyl, into the United States and has laundered billions of dollars in drug proceeds back to Mexico. Their operations initially focused on cocaine distribution, based on cooperative arrangements and close coordination with South American supply sources and distribution networks.

However, the landscape changed in the 2000s when, faced with increasing law enforcement activity, Colombians began abandoning their distribution businesses in the United States, opting instead to allow Mexican traffickers to invest in cocaine shipments at wholesale prices for distribution in the United States. As a result, Mexican traffickers and the CDS assumed a more integral role in transporting cocaine from Colombia to and through the United States.

Under Zambada García’s leadership, the cartel also recently expanded into fentanyl production and trafficking, including the purchase of fentanyl precursor chemicals from Chinese companies and the production of thousands of kilograms of fentanyl in laboratories in both rural areas and major cities in Mexico for distribution in the United States. The cartel’s distribution networks also supported money laundering efforts that delivered billions of dollars in illegal profits generated from drug sales in the United States back to the United States.

US VICTORY

The Mexican drug lord’s guilty plea was hailed by U.S. Attorney Pam Bondi as a “historic victory for the Department of Justice, our law enforcement partners, and the United States of America. As you know, drug lord Ismael Zambada García, also known as “El Mayo,” has confessed to a life of crime serving the Sinaloa Cartel, a foreign terrorist organization. Thanks to the tireless work of our prosecutors and federal agents, “El Mayo” will spend the rest of his life behind bars. He will die in a U.S. federal prison.”

Sympathized with DEA ​​Director Terry Cole and federal prosecutors in New York, Bondi called the drug trafficker a “foreign terrorist” who committed “horrible crimes against the American people” and who “will now pay for those crimes by spending the rest of his life behind bars in a U.S. prison.” The prosecutor emphasized that the date represented a crucial victory in President Donald Trump’s “ongoing fight” to completely eliminate foreign terrorist organizations and protect American citizens from deadly drugs and violence. She concluded that the case shatters the myth that cartel leaders are untouchable and exemplifies the global dismantling model against these organizations.

The heads of the two most important agencies in the United States immediately rejoiced. DEA Administrator Terrance Cole emphasized that Zambada “led one of the deadliest cartels in the world, pumping fentanyl, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine into our communities.” Meanwhile, FBI Director Kash Patel said the incident is a “proud moment for the FBI and its partners,” as the founders of a “notoriously violent drug trafficking organization engaged in a range of illegal activities including murder and corruption face the consequences of their actions.”

In Mexico, doubts persist about how Ismael Zambada ended up in the neighboring country, and now, President Sheinbaum asserted that she was concerned about the way in which DEA ​​Director Terrance Cole considered former Secretary of Public Security Genaro García Luna to be one of the three major drug traffickers arrested by the United States government, along with “El Mayo” Zambada and “El Chapo” Guzmán.

For his part, the Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection, Omar García Harfuch, acknowledges that, despite the fact that its founders and main leaders are in custody, the CDS hasn’t disappeared, nor has it lost strength, because this criminal organization “has never had a leader as such; in other words, there have always been several leaders. It’s a cartel that has, let’s say, several branches: one of them was Ismael ‘Mayo’ Zambada; the other, ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán; then El Chapo’s sons: El Guano, who is also El Chapo’s brother; and another, El Chapo Isidro. In other words, the cartel can’t be finished because there are several heads of what was once the Sinaloa Cartel. So, there are still very important criminal cells and leaders that need to be arrested.”

García Harfuch warns that there is no evidence that the corruption network woven around this cartel has reached military personnel, marines, or federal government officials, following the letter presented by Zambada García in the New York District Court. However, at this time, no names of individuals linked to the criminal group have been revealed. These identities may already be known to US authorities and could increase in the near future when several of the drug lords exiled from Mexico plead guilty and provide testimony.

On February 27, the first mass transfer of 29 criminals to the United States was recorded during the current administration, under the pretext of national security reasons and the possibility that drug lords such as Rafael Caro Quintero, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, Antonio Oseguera Cervantes, and Erick Valencia Salazar could escape from prison. The second group transfer occurred on August 12, when 26 other drug traffickers, including Pablo Edwin Huerta Nuño, Servando Gómez Martínez, Abigael González Valencia, and Juan Carlos Félix Gastélum, were handed over to US authorities for trial.

These high-profile individuals, along with others who were already in the United States and have already reached agreements with prosecutors to plead guilty, or have even been sentenced, have cooperated and will continue to provide information to imprison other members of Mexico’s most notorious criminal organizations and disrupt their financial flows. Among those pending cases are Joaquín Guzmán López, known as “El Güero Moreno,” son of “El Chapo” Guzmán, and the case of the other leader of Los Chapitos or Los Menores, Ovidio Guzmán López, alias “El Ratón,” who pleaded guilty in Chicago, Illinois, where he awaits sentencing in five months.

It is estimated that the information obtained by the US government will allow it to negotiate with its Mexican counterpart to arrest the fugitive drug traffickers: Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG); the brothers Iván Archivaldo and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, who head the Los Chapitos faction in the CDS; and others who are part of groups such as Los Viagra, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, and the Northeast Cartel. The information gathered from drug traffickers will also be used to reach commercial agreements between the two countries, so politicians, businessmen, and military personnel wouldn’t necessarily be targeted.

Source: Zeta Tijuana