Inside the Rise and Fall of Sinaloa Cartel Kingpin El Mayo

Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada García spent nearly four decades leading Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel and building it into a global criminal empire. His reign “poisoned American communities, corrupted public officials and used murder and terror to protect its power," U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida said.

Zambada’s ability to keep a low-profile—unlike his former partner, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán Loera—kept him just out of law enforcement’s grasp.

Then, on July 25, 2024, Zambada took a private plane from Mexico to New Mexico, just outside El Paso, Texas, and was arrested after he was betrayed by one of El Chapo’s sons. Two years later, on July 20, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Zambada, now 76, had been sentenced to life in prison and ordered to pay $15 billion in forfeiture for being the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and related racketeering crimes.

His sentence marked “the end of his reign over the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most violent and deadly drug cartels in history,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department's Criminal Division said. “He will never again inflict carnage, corrupt public officials, or traffic deadly drugs into our communities that ruin Americans and their families.”

In a defense memo written about his client’s life, attorney Frank Perez attempted to paint Zambada as someone who was a product of his environment. 

Addressing the court himself, Zambada furthered that attempt, saying that he “grew up in an environment where violence and crime seemed normal,” though he added, “I know that’s no excuse. There comes a time when every person must take responsibility for their decisions. I didn’t, and many people paid the price.”

Zambada was born to a family of subsistence farmers in rural Sinaloa, Mexico. He was the second of seven children and the oldest son. He stopped going to school after the sixth grade and was 12 when his father died of brain cancer. Zambada then took over running the family farm and became responsible for providing for his siblings, according to the defense memo.

If his father hadn’t died, Zambada believes he would have continued with his education.

At age 15, he delivered meat for a butcher shop run by his uncle while he continued to run the family farm.

At 19, he discovered the drug trade from an older friend who “took him up to the mountains about an hour from their village where each planted marijuana, camouflaging it within rows of corn on the same parcel,” according to the defense memo. His first harvest of 60 pounds barely earned him $400, so during the following year, Zambada planted more marijuana. He would continue to increase his production year over year.

From those origins, the defense memo states Zambada was able to establish friendships with other people in the marijuana and opium trade. Slowly, the Sinaloa Cartel, initially known as the Mexican Federation, was born.

“Gradually, over the course of many years, he rose to become one of the dominant figures in drug trafficking,” according to the memo. “The rise in leadership evolved over numerous decades and was not foreseen by the defendant or others.”

From the late 1980s to Zambada’s arrest, the Sinaloa Cartel imported lethal quantities of narcotics—including, among others, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl—into the United States and laundered billions of dollars in drug proceeds back to Mexico, according to the government. The cartel also produced thousands of kilograms of fentanyl in laboratories in both rural areas and major cities in Mexico for distribution in the United States.

During that time, Zambada fathered 16 children.

Zambada ended up in El Paso because he was lured there during a sting operation that directed by El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López; Zambada believed he was traveling to look at prospective properties for airstrips to use. 

Guzmán López was also arrested. Knowing he was also wanted, Guzmán López hoped to secure a better deal for himself if he delivered Zambada to authorities. 

In Zambada’s defense memo, Perez, his attorney, asked that Judge Brian Cogan, who also presided over El Chapo’s case, show Zambada some mercy because of his deteriorating health and acceptance of responsibility. His guilty plea allowed the government to forgo what would have been a lengthy and expensive trial.

Cogan said he would recommend that the Federal Bureau of Prisons take Zambada’s health into consideration when deciding where he should serve his time. Prosecutors objected to sending Zambada to a lower-security prison, arguing he could continue to direct the cartel from behind bars.

Federal court records show that Zambada is held at MDC Brooklyn, an administrative security-level prison in New York City.

The Drug Enforcement Administration says the Sinaloa Cartel “remains one of the most significant threats to public safety, public health, and national security.” The agency has identified tens of thousands of members and has investigated Sinaloa operations in at least 40 countries.