Sinaloa Cartel Co-Founder ‘El Mayo’ Zambada Sentenced to Life in Prison

A federal judge in Brooklyn on Monday sentenced Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a co-founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, to life in prison. U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan imposed the sentence on Zambada, 76, according to Al Jazeera and the Associated Press.

Zambada agreed in August 2025 to plead guilty to racketeering conspiracy and operating a continuing criminal enterprise, Al Jazeera reported. Those charges carried a mandatory life term. In the plea he admitted shipping millions of kilograms of cocaine into the United States over decades, and the Justice Department said it would not seek the death penalty. The AP reported that he also faces $15 billion in penalties tied to the cartel’s proceeds.

Cogan told the court the sentence was “anticlimactic” because he had no discretion, the AP reported. The judge will recommend, according to Zambada’s lawyer, that Zambada serve his time at a federal prison hospital; he described “progressive illnesses” and a mental state “drifting toward cognitively impaired.” Zambada’s medical records are sealed. His lawyer, Frank Perez, had asked in a July 6 filing for a facility with adequate medical care, Al Jazeera reported, while prosecutors argued in a July 13 filing that some of the prisons the defense suggested might not handle the security risks because, in their words, individuals loyal to Zambada “continue to control the Cartel.”

Zambada spoke before he was sentenced. According to the AP, he said “the violence must end,” apologized for the harm he caused, expressed remorse for the example he set and urged young people to choose a different path.

Prosecutors described a long record of violence. U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said “Today, that chapter closes for good,” Al Jazeera reported. Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Amir said Zambada used violence as a tool for more than three decades, including ordering torture and plotting killings such as that of his nephew, per the AP. DEA Administrator Terrance Cole said the agency will keep pursuing cartel leaders. A prosecutor said more than a million Americans died of overdoses during the years Zambada operated, the AP reported.

Zambada was arrested in July 2024 alongside Joaquin Guzman Lopez, a son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, after a plane landed in the United States. Zambada has said he was kidnapped in Mexico and flown to the United States, the AP noted; that account was not a finding by the court. Guzman Lopez has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges, Al Jazeera reported.

Al Jazeera described the sentence as among the highest-profile handed to a Mexican trafficker in a U.S. court since Guzman received a life sentence in 2019. Guzman is held in a maximum-security prison in Colorado. Prosecutors argued in a July 13 filing that loyalists of Zambada still control the cartel.