Ismael Zambada, the Mexican drug lord known as El Mayo who spent decades as one of the most powerful figures in the Sinaloa cartel, has been sentenced to life in prison. The sentence was handed down in federal court in Brooklyn, closing a chapter on one of the longest-running and most feared leaders of the Mexican drug trade.
Zambada, who is 77 years old, had reached a deal with federal prosecutors, pleading guilty to drug trafficking and other charges. Under that agreement he avoided the possibility of the death penalty, accepting instead a mandatory sentence of life behind bars, an outcome that ensures he will not walk free again.
Prosecutors described a long and violent career at the top of the cartel. They said Zambada had carried out what they called a deadly reign of terror, overseeing an operation that flooded the United States with cocaine, fentanyl and other illicit drugs over the course of many years and fueled addiction and violence on both sides of the border.
For much of that time, according to prosecutors, Zambada led the notorious Sinaloa cartel alongside Joaquin Guzman, the trafficker known around the world as El Chapo. The two men built the organization into one of the dominant forces in the global drug trade before each was eventually brought to face justice in the United States.
Zambada had long been considered one of the most elusive of the cartel's leaders, a figure who managed to remain at large and in control for decades even as others around him were captured or killed. His guilty plea and sentencing bring an end to a pursuit that stretched across many years and multiple administrations.
The life sentence means Zambada, already in his late 70s, is expected to spend the remainder of his life in an American prison. Officials cast the outcome as a significant blow against the leadership of a cartel that has been blamed for driving much of the flow of deadly drugs into the country.
The case in Brooklyn is the latest to bring a top Sinaloa figure before a United States court, following the earlier prosecution of El Chapo, who is already serving time in the American prison system. With Zambada now sentenced, prosecutors pointed to the resolution as a milestone in the long effort to dismantle the cartel's command.