BROOKLYN — For more than four decades, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada ruled from the shadows. While other top Mexican drug traffickers were killed or extradited to the United States, Zambada remained comfortably ensconced atop his empire, exporting cocaine, meth, heroin and fentanyl around the globe from his stronghold in the state of Sinaloa.
Long after the downfall of his Sinaloa cartel partner, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Zambada continued to operate with impunity, always a step ahead of the law — until eventually it caught up to him too.
Now the question is whether he’ll take others down with him.
Before a federal judge in a Brooklyn courtroom on Monday, Zambada, 75, pleaded guilty to an array of charges for leading a “continuing criminal enterprise” from the late 1980s until his arrest last year. He admitted to money laundering, racketeering and smuggling massive quantities of drugs.
In a courtroom packed with journalists and U.S. law enforcement officials who spent years hunting him, Zambada appeared dressed in blue-and-orange jail scrubs, with silver hair slicked back and a neatly trimmed beard.
Asked by U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan whether he understood the implication of his guilty plea — which carries a mandatory life sentence with no chance for parole — Zambada addressed the court, reading prepared remarks in Spanish.
He said that he quit school after the sixth grade and got his start selling marijuana at age 19 in Sinaloa. He graduated to cocaine, trafficking an estimated 1.5 million kilos over the years, “most of which went to the U.S.”
The organization I led promoted corruption in my home country by paying police, military commanders and politicians that would allow us to operate freely.
— Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada
He described himself as the creator of the Sinaloa cartel, which involved a network of Colombian cocaine traffickers, logistics coordinators, wholesale distributors across the U.S., and “a large number of armed men in charge of security” in Mexico. He admitted ordering gunmen to kill rivals and acknowledged that “many innocent people also died.”
But Zambada’s remark that hung in the air in the courtroom had to do with the Mexican officials he paid off over the decades.
“The organization I led promoted corruption in my home country by paying police, military commanders and politicians that would allow us to operate freely,” he said. “It goes back to the very beginning when I was a young man starting out, and it continued for all those years.”
Zambada’s stunning downfall began last July when he arrived on a private jet at a small airport near El Paso. In the immediate aftermath, rumors swirled that Zambada may have orchestrated his surrender in order to undergo medical treatment or reunite with his brother and several sons who are believed to be living under witness protection after pleading guilty and cooperating with U.S. authorities to resolve their own criminal cases.
Zambada, however, has vehemently denied that his arrival in the U.S. was prearranged. A few weeks after he was taken into custody, he alleged he was set up and kidnapped by one of El Chapo’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López, a leader of the cartel faction known as Los Chapitos.
Zambada claimed in a letter released by his lawyer that he was lured to what he thought would be a meeting between Sinaloa’s governor and another prominent politician, only to be ambushed, zip-tied, forced onto the plane by Guzmán López and delivered to U.S. authorities.
Guzmán López, 39, is facing his own federal case in Chicago, where he has pleaded not guilty to drug and conspiracy charges. His younger brother, Ovidio Guzmán, recently pleaded guilty to similar charges, with court filings revealing that he has agreed to cooperate with U.S. investigators.
A mugshot of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, released by U.S. authorities during the trial of his longtime partner in the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
(U.S. Department of Justice)
Zambada’s lawyer, Frank Perez, denied Monday that his client is cooperating.
“The agreement that he reached with the U.S. authorities is a matter of public record,” Perez said in a statement, adding, “I can state categorically that there is no deal under which he is cooperating with the United States Government or any other government.”
But despite the denial, Zambada’s family’s history, combined with the fact that he has agreed to plead guilty rather than take his case to trial, is fueling speculation that he could be prepared to spill secrets about high-level corruption.
Paul Craine, the top official in Mexico for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from 2012 to 2017, said of Zambada: “He knows more than anybody.”
Craine, who retired from the DEA and now runs a private security firm, said it’s unlikely that federal prosecutors would ever agree to a deal that gives the kingpin anything less than life in prison.
Zambada was already spared the death penalty, but the government could dangle other benefits, he said, such as relocating family members to the United States for their safety or allowing him to serve his time somewhere cushier than the Colorado “supermax” prison where El Chapo and others deemed extreme security risks are held in near total isolation.
Zambada, Craine said, has knowledge about “40 years of the top leadership of the military and the government [in Mexico] that he was directly paying and had co-opted.”
“He’s the godfather,” Craine said. “He’s the consistency across everything.”
Zambada’s case is playing out during a delicate moment in U.S.-Mexico relations, with President Trump using tariffs as a cudgel to force action against the Sinaloa cartel and others responsible for shipping fentanyl and other drugs north across the Rio Grande. Trump designated Zambada’s group and others as terrorist organizations earlier this year, and has floated the possibility of the U.S. military taking action on the Mexican side of the border.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has sought to appease Trump by handing over dozens of reputed high-ranking cartel figures for prosecution by U.S. authorities, but Craine said those offerings may not be enough.
“There’s more value now in being able to target a high-level corrupt criminal political figure than there is in the biggest drug trafficker in Mexico,” he said.
Other former federal law enforcement officials echoed that assessment. Adam Braverman, a former U.S. attorney in San Diego who oversaw the indictments of Zambada and several of his sons, called Monday’s guilty plea “a monumental day for the Department of Justice.”
Braverman, who now works in private practice, said if Zambada were to cooperate, merely giving up other cartel figures would not be enough to make it worth the bargain.
“When you’re at the top of the chain, there’s nobody else to cooperate against,” he said. “You’re talking about generals, governors — potentially presidents of Mexico.”
Speaking at a news conference Monday after Zambada’s hearing, U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi called Zambada “one of the most prolific and powerful drug traffickers in this world.”
“El Mayo operated with impunity at the highest levels of the Mexican drug trafficking world, by paying bribes to government officials, by bribing law enforcement officers,” she said. “He controlled corrupt officials and officers who protected his workers and his drug shipments that traveled from Mexico into our country.”
Terry Cole, the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, spoke after Bondi and hammered home the significance of Zambada’s admission of guilt.
“This is just not another plea,” Cole said. “It’s a collapse of a myth that leaders of cartels are beyond the reach of American justice.”
Cole then hinted that another shoe might be dropping in the near future. He referenced “a large cash seizure” associated with Zambada that would be announced soon.
“Our work with the Mexican government is not done,” he said, adding: “There are proceedings happening as we speak.
Joaquín Guzmán Lopez, left, a son of the Sinaloa cartel leader known as “El Chapo,” and longtime cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in partially redacted photos released by the Mexican government following their arrests in 2024 in El Paso.
(Government of Mexico)
Past court proceedings have offered tantalizing glimpses of the type of dirt Zambada could dish on Mexico’s most prominent politicians. During the trial of El Chapo, court filings revealed that Zambada’s brother, Jesús “El Rey” Zambada, alleged to U.S. authorities he had bribed “an individual associated with the failed presidential campaign” of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2006. López Obrador took office in 2018 after winning that year’s election.
A similar allegation — which López Obrador has vehemently denied, citing a lack of evidence — surfaced again in 2023 when Zambada’s brother was called to testify against a former top Mexican security official who was convicted of secretly working on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel.
Asked on cross-examination about a $7-million payment that he allegedly gave to an attorney in Mexico, El Rey replied: “I do remember paying him some money, that according to him was for the campaign.”
Testimony about the alleged 2006 payment to López Obrador’s campaign was limited by judicial orders in both trials, and neither case offered a smoking gun to prove Zambada had paid off the former president, who is from the same ruling Morena political party as Sheinbaum.
But the events surrounding Mayo’s alleged kidnapping by El Chapo’s son have only added to speculation that the ex-president — who coined the slogan “hugs not bullets” to tout his hands-off approach to combating organized crime — and his party may have something to hide.
Zambada claimed in his letter last year that he was invited to a meeting near Sinaloa’s capital, Culiacán, where he expected to help mediate a dispute between the city’s former mayor, Héctor Melesio Cuén, and his political rival, Sinaloa’s current governor, Rubén Rocha Moya.
Melesio Cuén turned up shot to death on the day of Zambada’s arrest. Rocha Moya, a Morena party member, has denied any knowledge of the kidnapping plot, pointing to flight records that show he took a family trip to Los Angeles as the events were playing out.
Mexican federal authorities have cited several suspicious irregularities in the investigation into Melesio Cuén’s killing by Sinaloan state authorities, including the abrupt cremation of his body.
With tensions already running high, Guillermo Valdes Castellanos, a former head of the national intelligence agency that is Mexico’s equivalent of the CIA, said Zambada’s plea means some of Mexico’s political elites must now be sweating bullets.
“[The Americans] are going to concentrate on receiving information about all of the politicians who protected [El Mayo], who helped him from the army, the police, etc.,” he said. “The fact that he may have more solid information to accuse the Mexican politicians and authorities involved is what’s making people very nervous here.”
Zambada, for his part, acknowledged the damage he created by creating and leading the Sinaloa cartel in his remarks Monday. In addition to the life sentence his guilty plea will bring, he was ordered by the judge to forfeit $15 billion in illicit cash.
Zambada said he was sorry for “the human toll” of the violence he caused.
“I take responsibility for all of it,” he said. “I apologize to everyone affected by my actions.”
Since Zambada’s arrest last year, fighting between a cartel faction led by one of his sons, known as Mayito Flaco, and Los Chapitos has turned Sinaloa into one of Mexico’s most violent states. After the hearing concluded in Brooklyn, his lawyer issued a plea for peace.
“My client is also mindful of the impact of this case on his home state of Sinaloa,” Perez said. “He calls upon the people of Sinaloa to remain calm, to exercise restraint, and to avoid violence. Nothing is gained by bloodshed; it only deepens wounds and prolongs suffering. He urges his community to look instead toward peace and stability for the future of the state.”
