El Mayo Zambada accepts life sentence in the US in bid to avoid maximum-security prison
The 76-year-old Sinaloa Cartel leader hopes to avoid the same fate as his former partner Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán
Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada has accepted that he will be sentenced to life in prison in the United States, according to a letter submitted by his lawyer, which argues against his placement in a maximum-security prison.
“Defendant Ismael Zambada Garcia has pleaded guilty [...], fully aware that the consequence will be a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. He accepts this outcome, and does not ask the Court to sentence him outside the law,” reads the letter submitted Monday by El Mayo’s lawyer Frank A. Perez.
The lawyer begins the letter by noting that the cartel leader “contends with a complex of age-related health issues” and therefore asks that the prison to which he is assigned be “suitably equipped to address the defendant’s need for medical attention.”
Perez argues that the defence is not seeking “a low-security facility or special treatment” but rather that El Mayo “requires a secure medical or administrative setting.”
“He recognizes and accepts that the sentence to be imposed by this court will preclude any possibility of ever being released from incarceration,” Perez adds.
The letter argues that El Mayo has been “unequivocal in his acceptance of responsibility” since arriving in the United States “under highly unusual circumstances.”
“Mr. Zambada’s acceptance of responsibility has been continuous and unwavering for the past nearly two years. During his allocution at his Change of Plea hearing on August 25, 2025, he acknowledged the factual basis of his wrongdoing and expressed remorse,” the letter argues.
Perez grounds his request in what he describes as El Mayo’s “cooperative” and “accommodating” conduct before the U.S. justice system, noting that his guilty plea spared the courts “what would have been one of the most complex federal trials in history.”
The lawyer also draws an explicit contrast with the case involving Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman: “Mr. Zambada’s comportment has differed ‘markedly from that of other foreign organized crime figures who have been brought to this country through extradition, including his former partner in the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin ‘Chapo’ Guzman, who went through an 11-week jury trial seven years ago.”
Perez adds that while El Chapo was fully entitled to maintain his innocence, “the strain that it placed on court resources and personnel, and the millions of dollars in costs related to the additional security measures needed, were widely reported at the time.”
The abduction of El Mayo by El Chapo’s son Joaquín Guzmán López — as he himself acknowledged in his guilty plea — and his subsequent handover to U.S. authorities set off a wave of violence between two rival factions of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Since then, the northwestern Mexican state has been engulfed in the brutal conflict between Los Chapitos and Los Mayos, with the state capital, Culiacán, emerging as the main battleground in the cartel’s internal war.
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