Ex-Mexican drug lord Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada denounces violence as he’s sentenced to life in prison

In this courtroom sketch, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, centre, is seated beside his defence attorney Frank Perez, left, in federal court in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Sept. 13, 2024. (Elizabeth Williams via AP, File)

NEW YORK -- Former Mexican drug kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was sentenced in a U.S. court on Monday to life in prison and called for an end to the brand of brutal violence he used to grow the Sinaloa cartel into what prosecutors said was the world’s largest drug trafficking organization.

“No one wins in a war like this,” the 76-year-old Zambada said through a Spanish-language translator in Brooklyn federal court. He apologized “for the harm I caused and for the example I set.” He urged future generations to “choose a different path.”

“If there’s one thing I can say that has value today, it’s this: the violence must end,” the Sinaloa cartel co-founder said. “In Mexico and elsewhere 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 leads only to prison or death.”

Violence was Zambada’s “tool for more than three decades when it benefited him,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Amir said.

Zambada ordered torture and plotted murders -- including his own nephew’s killing -- as the cartel flooded the U.S. with tons of cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine and other drugs, Amir said.

More than a million Americans died of overdoses during Zambada’s reign -- many from drugs flowing from Mexico or the Sinaloa cartel, the prosecutor added.

Zambada’s punishment was guaranteed by his guilty plea last year to drug trafficking charges that carry a mandatory life sentence. He also faces US$15 billion in financial penalties related to proceeds from the cartel’s crimes, but prosecutors said they haven’t been able to identify or recover any assets.

“The sentence here is kind of anticlimactic because I have no discretion,” Judge Brian M. Cogan said. “He is going to spend the rest of his days in prison. He accepts that.”

His sentencing was the culmination of the U.S. government’s yearslong fight to bring the long-elusive drug lord to justice. He was arrested in 2024 after he said he was kidnapped in Mexico and flown to Texas.

Zambada “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,” Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said. “Today, that chapter closes for good.”

Judge says Zambada should go to a prison hospital

Cogan, acting on a defence request, said he will recommend that Zambada serve his sentence at a federal prison hospital where he can be treated for what his lawyer described as a “complex of age-related health issues.”

The judge ordered Zambada’s medical records sealed from public view but said he suffers from a number of “progressive illnesses” and that his mental state is “drifting toward cognitively impaired,” Cogan said.

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

Zambada’s lawyer, Frank Perez, stressed in court on Monday that he wasn’t cooperating with prosecutors. But, in arguing to have him sent to a prison hospital, Perez contrasted Zambada’s guilty plea and Guzman’s decision to go to trial -- an 11-week ordeal that involved closing down the Brooklyn Bridge to shuttle him to and from court and jail.

In pleading guilty, Cogan said, Zambada “has spared us all an exercise that we all know would’ve been very difficult.”

Zambada, wearing a tan jail suit over an orange T-shirt, walked gingerly as deputy federal marshals escorted him to and from the courtroom, which was packed with drug enforcement agents and prosecution staff. The top federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, Miami and western Texas watched from the gallery.

At first, he said he had trouble hearing and understanding the courtroom translator and, through the translator, asked Cogan to speak slower. After an adjustment to his earpiece, Zambada indicated that he was able to follow along.

He read his remarks in Spanish from a piece of paper, coughed several times during the hearing and stared across the room, looking toward reporters and sketch artists in the jury box. He appeared to show no emotion as Cogan confirmed his sentence.

Zambada was the Sinaloa cartel’s strategist and dealmaker

Zambada was seen as the Sinaloa cartel’s strategist and dealmaker and was more involved in its day-to-day operations than his co-founder Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who was convicted in 2019 and is serving a life sentence at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

Zambada was arrested in July 2024 after, according to Perez, he was beaten, tied up, abducted and driven to a private plane by one of Guzman’s sons, Joaquin Guzman Lopez. Their arrests touched off deadly fighting in Sinaloa that pitted Zambada’s loyalists against backers of Guzman’s sons, dubbed the Chapitos, or “little Chapos.”

Zambada pleaded guilty in August 2025 to charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise and racketeering conspiracy, acknowledging culpability for 85 underlying crimes, after prosecutors said they wouldn’t seek the death penalty.

In pleading guilty, Zambada said that from 1980 until last year, he and his cartel were responsible for transporting at least 1.5 million kilograms (3.3 million pounds) of cocaine, “most of which went to the United States.” Zambada, the father of 16 children ranging in age from 6 to 55, said he first got into the drug trade as a marijuana grower in 1969 after leaving school with a sixth-grade education.

He acknowledged the scope of the Sinaloa operation, including underlings who built relationships with Colombian cocaine producers, oversaw importing cocaine to Mexico by boat and plane and smuggling the drug across the U.S.-Mexico border. He said the cartel raked in hundreds of millions of dollars a year and admitted that people working for him paid hefty bribes to Mexican officials “so they could operate freely.”

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 claiming to be collecting debts for Zambada and pocketing the money without Zambada’s permission.

In 2023, at least three people were killed in retaliatory violence that Zambada directed after a large cache of fentanyl pills, methamphetamine and cocaine was stolen from the cartel, prosecutors said.

“I grew up in an environment where violence and crime seemed normal, but now I know that’s no excuse,” Zambada said in court on Monday. “There comes a time when every person must take responsibility for their decisions. I didn’t, and many people paid the price.”

Michael R. Sisak, The Associated Press