Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada — co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel — pleaded guilty Monday to leading a criminal enterprise and racketeering.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the plea in Brooklyn, stating that Zambada admitted to a lifetime of criminal activities with the Sinaloa Cartel, classified as a foreign terrorist organization.
“Thanks to the relentless efforts of our prosecutors and federal agents, El Mayo will spend the remainder of his life behind bars. He will die in a U.S. federal prison where he belongs,” Bondi remarked. “His guilty plea takes us a step forward towards our ultimate aim of dismantling drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations that saturate our country with drugs, human trafficking, and homicides.”
Over the last thirty years, Zambada and his cohorts amassed billions by smuggling dangerous drugs like fentanyl into the U.S., Bondi highlighted. Zambada co-founded the Sinaloa Cartel with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The Mexican drug kingpin Ismael Zambada Garcia, also known as “El Mayo,” who co-founded the infamous Sinaloa drug cartel, is now in U.S. custody. (Left Image: Courtesy of the Procuraduria General de la Republica/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo / Right Photo: U.S. Department of State via AP)
As part of the plea agreement, Zambada consented to transfer the Western District of Texas indictment to the Eastern District of New York for plea and sentencing. This agreement holds him accountable in the Eastern District of New York for crimes in both indictments. All other charges will be dropped when Zambada is sentenced on January 13, 2026.
He is subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of life imprisonment for leading a continual criminal enterprise and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for racketeering.
He also agreed to a $15 billion forfeiture at sentencing.
Sought by American law enforcement for more than two decades, Zambada has been in U.S. custody since July 25, when he landed in a private plane at an airport outside El Paso in the company of another fugitive cartel leader, Joaquín Guzmán López, according to federal authorities.
Zambada later said in a letter that he was forcibly kidnapped in Mexico and brought to the U.S. by Guzmán López, one of El Chapo’s sons.
