Wife of imprisoned cartel leader El Chapo pleads guilty to US drug-trafficking charges after helping to run his empire
Emma Coronel Aispuro, the former beauty pageant queen who married Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, has pleaded guilty to US criminal charges after she allegedly helped run her husband's cartel in his absence.
The 31-year-old Aispuro entered her guilty plea on federal drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges on Thursday in Washington’s US District Court. Prosecutors had accused her not only of aiding El Chapo in his escape from a Mexican prison in 2015 – and plotting another escape before he was extradited to the US in 2017 – but also of helping run the Sinaloa Cartel.
Under her plea deal with prosecutors, Aispuro admitted to conspiring to distribute large quantities of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana for import into the US. The dual US-Mexican citizen had been in jail since being arrested at Dulles International Airport near Washington in February.
Prosecutors said Aispuro helped to import around 90,000 kilograms of heroin, 450,000 kilograms of cocaine, 45,000 kilograms of methamphetamine, and 90,000 kilograms of marijuana into the US. She allegedly delivered messages to cartel members and worked with El Chapo's sons to coordinate his prison escapes.
Guzman, 64, is currently serving a life sentence plus 30 years at a maximum-security federal prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 of large-scale drug-trafficking charges and conspiracy to commit murder. The facility is considered the highest-security prison in the US, housing such notorious criminals as Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef.
Born in San Francisco and raised in northwestern Mexico, Aispuro was crowned beauty queen of Canelas, Durango in 2006. At the age of 17, she reportedly met El Chapo – then the Sinaloa Cartel's 50-year-old leader – and married him on her 18th birthday.
Also on rt.com Pushing a new line: Drug lord El Chapo’s wife launching a fashion brand bearing his nameAispuro was featured on the reality TV series ‘Cartel Crew’ and announced the launch of a fashion brand named after El Chapo following his US federal court conviction in 2019. Her Instagram account has 663,000 followers.
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