A federal court sentenced Mexican drug kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada to life in prison on July 20 for shipping millions of kilograms of cocaine as leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Zambada pleaded guilty last year. He is one of the most high-profile Mexican drug traffickers to be sent to U.S. prison since fellow Sinaloa leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was sentenced to life behind bars in 2019.
Guzman is serving his sentence at the federal Supermax prison in Colorado.
U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan sentenced Zambada, 76, during a hearing in Brooklyn federal court in New York.
Zambada pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and continuing criminal enterprise. The Justice Department said it would not seek the death penalty. The charges carried a mandatory sentence of life behind bars.
A lawyer for Zambada, Frank Perez, wrote in a July 6 court filing that his client knew he would receive a life sentence when he decided to plead guilty. Perez requested that Cogan recommend to the Bureau of Prisons that Zambada serve his sentence in a facility where he would get sufficient medical care.
“Mr. Zambada’s unequivocal acceptance of responsibility has been a defining feature of his conduct since his involuntary arrival in the United States,” Perez wrote.
“For Mr. Zambada to end up not only with the same life sentence as Mr. Guzman, but also in the same draconian Supermax prison, would fail to account in any way for the fact that he took the right path in resolving the charges against him,” he added.
However, prosecutors wrote in a July 13 filing that the prisons suggested by Perez might not alleviate security risks posed by Zambada, such as possibly continuing to direct cartel activities while in prison.
“Those security concerns will continue for the foreseeable future because individuals loyal to the defendant continue to control the Cartel,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.
Zambada was more involved in the cartel’s day-to-day operations than Guzman and was viewed as its dealmaker and strategist.
He “was one of the most—if not the most—prolific and powerful narcotraffickers in the world,” prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memo. “It would be difficult to overstate the magnitude” of his crimes and the scale of the “corruption, violence, and other harm he spread throughout Mexico, the United States, and the world.”
