A son of notorious Mexican drug kingpin \u201cEl Chapo\u201d pleaded guilty on Friday to US drug-trafficking charges, becoming the first of the drug lord\u2019s sons to enter a plea deal.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors allege Ovidio Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez and his brother, Joaqu\u00edn Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez, ran a faction of the Sinaloa cartel. They became known locally as the \u201cChapitos\u201d, or \u201clittle Chapos\u201d, and federal authorities in 2023 described the operation as a major effort to send \u201cstaggering\u201d quantities of fentanyl into the US.<\/p>\n
As part of a plea agreement, Ovidio Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez admitted to helping oversee the production and smuggling of large quantities of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and fentanyl into the United States, fueling a crisis that has contributed to tens of thousands of overdose deaths annually.<\/p>\n
Ovidio Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering and firearms charges tied to his leadership role in the cartel. Terms of the deal, including sentencing recommendations or cooperation agreements, were not immediately disclosed.<\/p>\n
Speculation about a deal had percolated for months, as behind-the-scenes negotiations quietly progressed.<\/p>\n
Jeffrey Lichtman, an attorney for the two brothers, said on Friday he would wait until Ovidio Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez was sentenced before discussing whether the agreement was a good deal.<\/p>\n
Ovidio Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez\u2019s sentencing was postponed while he cooperates with US authorities, as he agreed to do on Friday. Whether he avoids a life in prison sentence depends on whether authorities say he has held up his end of the agreement.<\/p>\n
Lichtman said he did not know whether the case against Joaqu\u00edn Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez could be resolved with a plea deal, noting that it was \u201ccompletely different\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cRemember, Joaqu\u00edn was arrested in America well after Ovidio was, so it takes time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School and former assistant US attorney in Los Angeles, said that Ovidio Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez, by pleading guilty, may have \u201csaved other family members\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this way, he has some control over who he\u2019s cooperating against and what the world will know about that cooperation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Levenson called the plea change a \u201cbig step\u201d for the US. government and said Ovidio Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez could provide \u201ca roadmap of how to identify members of the cartel\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is big,\u201d she said. \u201cThe best way for them to take out the cartel is to find out about its operations from an insider, and that\u2019s what they get from his cooperation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, on Friday criticized the \u201clack of coherence\u201d in American policy toward Mexican cartels, highlighting the disparity between the US government declaring cartels foreign terrorist organizations, but also striking plea deals with their leaders.<\/p>\n
Joaqu\u00edn \u201cEl Chapo\u201d Guzm\u00e1n is serving a life sentence after being convicted in 2019 for his role as the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, having smuggled mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States over 25 years. The brothers allegedly assumed their father\u2019s former leadership role in the cartel.<\/p>\n
Ovidio Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez was arrested in Mexico in 2023 and extradited to the United States. He initially pleaded not guilty but had signaled in recent months his intent to change his plea.<\/p>\n
Joaqu\u00edn Guzm\u00e1n L\u00f3pez and another longtime Sinaloa leader, Ismael \u201cEl Mayo\u201d Zambada, were arrested in July 2024 in Texas after they landed in the US on a private plane. Both men have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges. Their dramatic capture prompted a surge in violence in Mexico\u2019s northern state of Sinaloa as two factions of the Sinaloa cartel clashed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A son of notorious Mexican drug kingpin \u201cEl Chapo\u201d pleaded guilty on Friday to US drug-trafficking charges, becoming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-257590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114837514202175106","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}