A top leader of the Chapitos faction of the Sinaloa Cartel has agreed to cooperate with US prosecutors, marking yet another judicial case that will not go to trial or expose the inner workings of organized crime in Mexico.
Joaquín Guzmán López, one of the sons of former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias “El Chapo,” changed his previous plea of not guilty and instead pleaded guilty during a December 1 hearing to two drug trafficking charges and engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, according to court documents.
López was arrested in July 2024 after a dramatic sequence of events that later kicked off a ruthless war inside the Sinaloa Cartel that is still raging today. He was taken into custody after orchestrating the kidnapping and handover of Ismael Zambada García, alias “El Mayo,” the infamous former drug capo who spent decades evading capture.
Read our special series chronicling the impact of the Sinaloa Cartel’s internal criminal conflict and what it has meant for organized crime dynamics in Mexico.
In reaching a plea deal, López joins his brother, Ovidio Guzmán López, who also pleaded guilty to federal drug charges earlier this year. The two are accused of leading the Sinaloa Cartel’s Chapitos faction alongside Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, both of whom are also sons of El Chapo. Iván and Jesús remain at large and are top targets of US and Mexican law enforcement.
The Guzmán López brothers are among a number of Sinaloa Cartel figures arrested and extradited to the United States who have decided to cooperate with authorities. One of the most recent came in November, when José Guadalupe Lupe Tapia Quintero, alias “Lupe Tapia,” another top lieutenant who US prosecutors called a “major coordinator” of drug shipments, also agreed to cooperate.
While these negotiations mean that no bombshell revelations on the Mexican drug trade will come to light in a trial, López’s plea agreement did provide further detail on one landmark event: what led up to Zambada’s kidnapping and arrest.
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López admitted to luring Zambada to a meeting at a ranch on the outskirts of Culiacán on July 25, 2024, according to court documents. López was waiting for Zambada when he arrived, and after getting him alone, a number of armed men put him in handcuffs and threw a black bag over his head.
This version of events tracks with a statement Zambada released through his lawyer shortly after his capture, in which he detailed how he was tricked into meeting with López and later kidnapped.
“As soon as I set foot inside that room, I was ambushed. A group of men assaulted me, knocked me to the ground, and placed a dark-colored hood over my head. They tied me up and handcuffed me,” Zambada said in the letter.
The group proceeded to carry Zambada into a pickup truck idling outside the ranch and whisked him away to a nearby airstrip where a small plane was waiting. Once on board, Zambada was zip-tied and sedated.
After Zambada was incapacitated, the plane flew north from Sinaloa’s capital city, over the US-Mexico border, and to a private airport in the southern part of the state of New Mexico, where US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents were waiting.
Neither the DEA, US Justice Department, nor López’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, responded to InSight Crime’s request for comment on these events by the time of publication.
López said in the plea agreement that the US government “did not request, induce, sanction, approve, or condone the kidnapping.” However, while the US government may not have requested the kidnapping, DEA officers appear to have been aware of the plan.
At that time, López’s brother, Ovidio, was already in custody and actively negotiating with federal prosecutors. It was through him that they must have become aware of the planned kidnapping, according to Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former head of international operations.
“[The US government] didn’t participate, but they knew Joaquín was going to try and kidnap Mayo Zambada,” he told InSight Crime. “That’s why when the aircraft carrying them landed in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, US federal agents were already waiting.”
The extent of the US role in Zambada’s kidnapping is not the only aspect of the case that remains unclear. During the meeting Zambada was summoned to at the ranch, Héctor Melesio Cuen Ojeda, a former mayor of Culiacán and rector of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa – UAS), was murdered.
The Sinaloa State Attorney General’s Office initially said that Cuen was killed in an attempted carjacking at a gas station far from the ranch. But that version of events was eventually disproven, and prosecutors later said Cuen was murdered at the ranch after confirming bloodstains found at the site belonged to him.
Cuen’s body was later cremated before a proper autopsy was conducted, preventing a full investigation of the killing and leaving details around his death unclear.