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Sinaloa Cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia, of Mexico, was sentenced on Monday to life in a U.S. prison and ordered to forfeit $15 billion in drug trafficking profits, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said that while he had no choice but to give a life sentence since the charges carried a mandatory term of life imprisonment, he believed it was the right punishment.
“The almost unimaginable amount of drugs attributable to him and the number of murders that we can document is enough to justify Congress’s decision to make this a mandatory life sentence,” the judge said.
He is one of the most high-profile Mexican drug traffickers to be sentenced by a U.S. judge since fellow Sinaloa leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was sentenced to life in prison in 2019.
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Garcia, 76, agreed to plead guilty in August 2025 to multiple charges, including racketeering conspiracy and continuing criminal enterprise, after the DOJ said it would not pursue the death penalty.
He was arrested in July 2024 alongside Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of Guzman’s sons, after their plane landed in the U.S. Guzman Lopez has since pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including drug trafficking and a July 2024 kidnapping.
Joseph Nocella, a federal prosecutor, told reporters after Garcia’s sentencing that Guzman Lopez had admitted to kidnapping Garcia in an attempt to secure leniency and credit from U.S. law enforcement.
“The United States made perfectly clear that we do not condone kidnapping and that he would receive no credit,” Nocella said.
Guzman Lopez has not yet been sentenced.
Garcia told the court during his sentencing on Monday that he took responsibility for the harm he had caused.
“No one wins in a war like this. To the next generation, I say, choose a different path,” he said.
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Cogan suggested that Garcia be placed in a facility where he would receive adequate medical care since he was suffering from several progressive health ailments.
“Ismael Zambada Garcia spent nearly four decades poisoning American communities to make billions of dollars in profit and ordering the murders of anyone who stood in his way. Today, that chapter closes for good,” Nocella said in a statement.
“He will spend the rest of his life in a U.S. prison, exactly where he belongs,” he added. This sentence was made possible by the tireless bilateral cooperation between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement, who refused to let El Mayo’s years of evading justice become a permanent state of affairs. We hope that today’s sentence brings some measure of justice to the countless victims of the Sinaloa Cartel’s narcotics trafficking and violence.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
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