Sinaloa cartel leader El Mayo gets life in U.S. prison

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the long-elusive co-founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, was sentenced Monday to life in a U.S. prison, closing one of the Justice Department’s highest-profile drug trafficking cases seven years after Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán received the same punishment.

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan imposed the sentence in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. The Justice Department said Zambada, 76, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for his role as a principal leader of a “continuing criminal enterprise” and for racketeering violations.

“No one wins in a war like this,” Zambada said through a Spanish-language translator in court. He apologized “for the harm I caused and for the example I set” and urged future generations to “choose a different path.”

“If there’s one thing I can say that has value today, it’s this: the violence must end,” he said. “In Mexico and elsewhere affected by this type of crime, too many lives are lost, too many families are destroyed, and too many young people are trapped in a cycle that leads only to prison or death.”

Zambada pleaded guilty in August 2025 to charges including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise and racketeering conspiracy after prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty. The charges carried a mandatory life sentence. He acknowledged responsibility for 85 underlying crimes and said that from 1980 until last year, he and the cartel transported at least 1.5 million kilograms of cocaine, “most of which went to the United States.”

Prosecutors said Zambada and Guzmán built the Sinaloa cartel into the world’s largest drug trafficking organization, responsible for massive quantities of heroin, cocaine, fentanyl and other illegal drugs distributed in the United States. They said he ordered torture, plotted murders and paid bribes to Mexican officials so the cartel could operate freely.

“Ismael Zambada Garcia spent nearly four decades poisoning American communities to make billions of dollars in profit and ordering the murders of anyone who stood in his way. Today, that chapter closes for good,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said in a statement.

Along with life imprisonment, Zambada faces $15 billion in financial penalties, which prosecutors said reflected proceeds from cartel crimes under his leadership.

Zambada was arrested in July 2024 alongside Joaquín Guzmán López, one of Guzmán’s sons. Al Jazeera reported that their plane landed at a small airstrip in New Mexico. CBS News reported that Zambada said he was kidnapped in Mexico and flown to Texas, and that his lawyer said he was beaten, tied up, abducted and driven to a private plane by Guzmán López. Guzmán López has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges.

The arrests set off deadly fighting in Sinaloa between Zambada loyalists and supporters of Guzmán’s sons, known as the Chapitos, CBS News reported. The outlet also reported that Mexico is investigating whether its sovereignty was violated after the FBI displayed the plane used to bring Zambada to the United States. Mexican government secretary Rosa Icela Rodriguez said the U.S. Embassy in Mexico had previously said no U.S. agency participated in the operation. “The versions are contradictory. Someone lied,” she said.

Zambada’s lawyer, Frank Perez, asked that he serve his sentence in a prison hospital, saying he has age-related health issues and needs continuing medical care. Prosecutors urged the judge to consider “serious ongoing security risks,” saying some facilities may not be appropriate and warning that loyalists continue to control the cartel.

Guzmán, convicted in 2019, is serving a life sentence at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.