The co-founder of the world’s largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization was arrested on U.S. soil this week after being duped by a leader of rival faction inside the cartel.
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, 76, a top leader and the co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, was lured onto a plane on Thursday by 38-year-old Joaquín Guzmán López, the son of Mexican drug cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, who is locked up in the U.S. for the rest of his life after being convicted on numerous federal charges.
Joaquín Guzmán López allegedly got Zambada to board the plane by telling him that they were going to look at real estate in a different part of Mexico.
However, the Beechcraft King Air plane that they boarded turned north and landed just across the border in New Mexico at a small airport right next to El Paso where both men were quickly arrested by federal law enforcement officials.
The Daily Wire spoke with a retired U.S. law enforcement narcotics expert who worked in the field in both the U.S. and Mexico against drug cartels who confirmed that Zambada was lured onto the plane under “false pretenses.”
They were reportedly looking at clandestine landing strips that were built for drug trafficking routes and at property where they could set up drug labs, the former official, who requested to speak on anonymity to preserve their sources within the Mexican government, said.
“Joaquín Guzmán López and his brother Ovidio Guzmán López, who is jailed in the U.S. awaiting trial, are considered the least influential of Los Chapitos,” the former official said.
El Chapo’s sons, who are collectively known as the Chapitos, are at war with the faction of the Sinaloa Cartel that Zambada runs because they blame him for their father’s arrest in 2016. The Chapitos are known for being flashy and being hyper-violent toward their rivals, including feeding them alive to tigers.
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The former official spoke to Mexican law enforcement officials who said that Zambada’s arrest has stunned Mexico’s top political, law enforcement, and military leaders — many of whom are “s****ing bricks” because they are worried that Zambada will reveal the extent of their involvement in drug trafficking, including accepting bribes, targeting the cartel’s rivals, providing safe passage corridors for drug shipments, and covering up a wide-range of crimes.
It was unclear why Joaquín Guzmán López decided to finally turn himself in since U.S. law enforcement had been encouraging him to do so for years.
Zambada has never spent any time in a jail or prison facility in either the U.S. or Mexico. He previously stated in a 2010 interview that he would rather “kill myself” than be locked up because he was “terrified of being incarcerated.”
Zambada has been charged in numerous U.S. indictments over the last two decades and will likely spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.
Zambada was arraigned in federal court on Friday in El Paso where a judge read him all the charges that he faces in the U.S.
The Sinaloa Cartel is the largest and most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world and is by far the largest exporter of illicit fentanyl and methamphetamine to drug markets in the U.S.
