The famous 76-year-old drug trafficker, one of the three founders and until two years ago the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, was sentenced this Monday to life in prison for drug trafficking in a US court.
The sentence came after in August 2025, Zambada agreed to plead guilty to that and other crimes after an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office, which, for its part, gave up requesting that he be sentenced to the death penalty.
On that occasion, “El Mayo”, who was captured in the US in July 2024, also admitted to having bribed police and politicians in his country.
With this Monday’s conviction, the criminal history of someone who was one of the most wanted drug traffickers in the world, accused of extortion, corruption, drug trafficking and money laundering, comes to an end.
And the epilogue of a symbol of the industry – El Mayo, also known as “The Man with the Hat” – who has generated admiration, stories and a handful of deaths and cases of corruption after four decades in the business.
The corrido tumbado by Los Tucanes, which has more than 13 million views on YouTube, continues: “The law wants to stop him, the contras want to kill him, but no one has succeeded, the devil appears to them.”
But the myth of El Mayo, which probably remains a cultural myth, will no longer be able to boast of his great feat: that “he had never been arrested.” And much less, after having been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Now he will share the fate of another founder and old ally of the Sinaloa cartel, El Chapo, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2019.
The sentence is accompanied by a huge reparatory fine of US$15 billion that Judge Brian Cogan had already announced in August 2025.
“Today, drug trafficker ‘El Mayo’ was sentenced to life in prison, marking the end of his reign at the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most violent and lethal drug trafficking organizations in history,” said Deputy Attorney General A. Tysen Duva, of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, on Monday.
“Ismael Zambada García spent nearly four decades poisoning American communities for billions of dollars in profits and ordering the murder of anyone who stood in his way. Today, that chapter is definitively closed,” said U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. of the Eastern District of New York.
“He will spend the rest of his life in an American prison, exactly where he belongs,” he added.
From trafficker to leader
The story of Mayo, the rise from common trafficker to “capo de capos”, as he is often called, is one of pragmatism, cunning and corruption.
After a short time in which he was a furniture deliveryman on the streets of Culiacán, Zambada began in the 70s as a trafficker in the Guadalajara cartel, a pioneer in the industry trading opium, marijuana and, eventually, cocaine.
He then worked in the Juárez cartel, first as a middle manager and then as a leader, increasingly closer to Amado Carrillo, the so-called “Lord of the Skies.” From there it is believed that he created his network of contacts in Colombia, a country where he made great friends and cocaine producing partners.
As other bosses died or fell, Zambada became more powerful. He rarely had a problem with betraying an ally.
And if something differentiates him from the others, it is that he always kept a low profile. There are almost no images of him.
During his years of reign, it was reported that he underwent surgeries to change his appearance. That he had many wives and children. Little more.
He spent decades back and forth among the mountains of northwestern Mexico. It was unusual for him to sleep two nights in a row in the same place.
The most businessman of drug traffickers
One of his sons, Vicente Zambada Niebla, was detained by Mexican authorities in 2009. His prison diary was later released.
In it, and in the testimony he gave to the US authorities, Zambada junior said that his father paid one million dollars in bribes a month.
That his network of complicity included banks and governments. That he maintained contact with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA, in English).
Mayo Zambada became a myth because he has been one of the drug traffickers most concerned about generating a bond with the community.
He has been a patron of El Álamo, his native ranchería, and other towns in the Sinaloa region, financing their arrangements, works and celebrations.
And if he was one of those with the least prominence and most social roots, El Mayo was also the drug trafficker who trafficked the least, because his great contribution to the operation of the Sinaloa Cartel, more than the export of narcotics, was creating a commercial branch for money laundering managed by women in his family.
It is reported that he laundered billions of dollars. The United States Department of the Treasury credits him with the ownership of important construction, dairy production and service companies.
That is why he was the closest to politics, culture and the Mexican authorities.
He was also the one that can give the most information about the role of the legal world in the immense drug trafficking industry.
Capture and trial
But if Zambada’s life was marked by myth and legend, his capture, which occurred on July 25, 2024, had Hollywood overtones.
According to the report from the US authorities, Zambada appeared that day with the son of his former partner El Chapo Guzmán, Joaquín Guzmán López, before the US federal authorities.
It was a strange story: the most wanted man in Mexico up to that moment presented himself to the US authorities.
It was later learned that Guzmán López had tricked “Mayo” Zambada into getting on a plane in Mexico and crossing the border to “visit some real estate projects.”
Once in the US, “El Chapo”’s son turned him over to the authorities. At that time, a US$15 million reward was offered for Zambada.
Of course, the capture of the boss shook the structure of the Sinaloa cartel. It is estimated that by August 2025, due to the power struggle within the organization, around 2,000 people had died violently.
Already in US custody, “Mayo” initially refused to accept the charges. It indicated that he had been taken to the United States against his will.
However, in August 2025 an important change occurred: the prosecution decided not to seek the death penalty for Zambada’s crimes.
Then came his guilty plea.
However, Zambada’s lawyer, Frank Pérez, told reporters upon leaving that hearing that his client was not cooperating with US authorities and that he “does not at all” intend to incriminate anyone.
He pointed out that the reference he made to bribed authorities has already been the subject of other drug trafficking trials: “All that he said is already in other trials, he only said what was necessary. He is not going to talk about anyone,” Pérez told reporters.
“The information from ‘El Mayo’ Zambada stays with ‘El Mayo’ Zambada,” he added.
*This note was updated on July 20, 2026 following the sentence to life imprisonment.
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