Cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada gets life in prison in US for 2 years saying he was kidnapped, taken to Texas

Former Mexican drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was sentenced to life in prison in a US court on Monday, seven years after his Sinaloa cartel founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison.

Zambada’s sentencing in federal court in Brooklyn was the culmination of a years-long battle by the US government to bring the cartel leader who has long been unconvicted to justice. He was arrested in 2024 after he was allegedly kidnapped in Mexico and flown to Texas.

“Nobody wins a fight like this,” Zambada, 76, said through a Spanish-language interpreter in court. He apologized “for the damage I did and the example I set.” He urged future generations to “choose a different path.”

“If there is one thing I can say that is useful today, it is this: the violence must end,” said the founder of the Sinaloa company. “In Mexico and other places affected by this type of crime, too many lives are lost, too many families are destroyed, and too many young people are trapped in a cycle that only leads to prison or death.”

Zambada ordered the torture and assassination plot as he and his co-founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán grew the Sinaloa cartel into the world’s largest drug-trafficking organization, federal prosecutors said. In the cases against Zambada in New York and Texas, prosecutors allege that Zambada and other leaders of the Sinaloa cartel are responsible for a large amount of heroin, cocaine and fentanyl and other illegal drugs that are distributed in the US.

A Justice Department statement said US District Judge Brian Cogan sentenced him in federal court in Brooklyn to life in prison without parole for his role as the ringleader of an “ongoing criminal enterprise” and criminal violations.

“Ismael Zambada Garcia spent nearly four decades poisoning American communities to make billions of dollars in profits and ordering the execution of anyone who stood in his way. Today, that chapter closes for good,” said US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Joseph Nocella, Jr. in the statement.

Zambada has been seen as a cartel strategist and salesman and is more involved in its day-to-day operations than Guzmán, who was convicted in 2019 and serving a life sentence at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

Zambada pleaded guilty in August 2025 after prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty. Speaking through a Spanish-language translator, he apologized “to everyone who has suffered or been affected by my actions.”

Zambada, 76, asked to serve his sentence at the prison hospital. Zambada “suffers from a complex of age-related health problems” and “will require ongoing medical attention,” defense attorney Frank Perez said in a sentencing statement.

Federal prosecutors asked Judge Brian M. Cogan to consider the “significant continuing security risks” posed by Zambada, arguing that other facilities “may not be appropriate for security concerns.”

Judges often make recommendations about where inmates should serve time, but it’s up to the federal Bureau of Prisons to decide.

Zambada was “one of the most productive and powerful drug traffickers in the world,” prosecutors said in the sentencing letter. “It would be difficult to overstate the enormity” of his crimes and the scale of “the corruption, violence, and other harm he has spread throughout Mexico, the United States and the world.”

Along with the life sentence, he also faces $15 billion in financial penalties, which prosecutors say reflects the proceeds of crimes under his leadership.

Zambada pleaded guilty to charges of continuing a criminal enterprise and conspiracy to defraud, pleading guilty to 85 counts. From 1980 until last year, he and his company were responsible for transporting at least 1.5 million kilograms of cocaine, “most of which went to the United States,” he said when he pleaded guilty.

He acknowledged the scope of Sinaloa’s operations, including underlings who formed relationships with cocaine producers in Colombia, who oversaw the importation of cocaine into Mexico by boat and plane and the smuggling of the drug across the US-Mexico border. He said the cartel makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year and has admitted that people who work for him pay huge bribes to Mexican officials “so they can operate freely.”

“Organized Murder”

Months before his arrest, prosecutors said, Zambada ordered the killing of his nephew Eliseo Imperial Castro, also known as “Cheyo Antrax,” after learning that Castro was allegedly collecting Zambada’s debts and pocketing them without Zambada’s permission.

In 2023, at least three people were killed in a revenge attack directed by Zambada after a large cache of fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine pills was stolen from the company, prosecutors said.

According to US prosecutors, Zambada was also involved in the “organized killing” of other cartel members, police and soldiers.

In 2010, he gave a rare interview to the Mexican newspaper Proceso, revealing that the Mexican army had come close to kidnapping him four times.

Known as “the man in the hat,” Zambada said he feared prison more than death, and that his arrest or execution would not change the nature of drug trafficking in Mexico.

Zambada’s arrest took place after, according to his lawyer, he was beaten, arrested, and kidnapped on a private plane by one of Guzmán’s sons. Joaquín Guzmán López. Their arrest sparked a deadly war in Sinaloa that pitted Zambada’s followers against supporters of Guzmán’s sons, known as the Chapitos, or “little Chapos.” According to the US Department of Justice’s indictment, the Chapitos and their gang partners used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their opponents while some of their victims were “fed to the tigers dead or alive.”

Arguing that Zambada be sent to a prison hospital, Perez tried to contrast Zambada’s confession with Guzmán’s decision to stand trial — an 11-week ordeal that involved closing the Brooklyn Bridge to lock him up in court and in prison.

“Mr. Zambada’s unequivocal acceptance of responsibility has been a defining feature of his behavior since he voluntarily came to the United States,” Perez wrote.

“For Mr. Zambada to end up not only sentenced to life in prison like Mr. Guzman, but also to the same draconian Supermax prison, he will not fail to answer in any way that he took the right approach in solving the charges against him,” argued Perez.

Earlier this month, Mexico said it was investigating whether its sovereignty had been violated by the US when Zambada was captured after the FBI was shown at an exhibition the plane that was used to bring Zambada to the US.

“Versions conflict. Someone is lying,” he said.