Mayo Pleads Guilty
He will be in prison until death but promised to help with $15 billion in asset seizures. His lawyer still denies he will sing.
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UPDATES, with quotes from plea agreement, and Pam Bondi press conference.
Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, perhaps the most prolific narco trafficker to ever come out of Mexico (even while El Chapo was the most infamous), plead guilty today to multiple drug conspiracy charges in a federal court in the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn. In a historic session, at 12:34 pm New York time, Zambada entered his guilty plea saying (according to journalist Keegan Hamilton in the courtroom): “I created a criminal network that I led, called the Sinaloa cartel…The organization I led promoted corruption in my home country by paying police, military commanders and politicians that allowed us to operate freely. It goes back to the very beginning when I was a young man starting out and it continued for all those years…I take responsibility for all of it and I apologize to everyone affected by my actions.”
Mayo, who is 75 years old (Mayo’s lawyer Frank Perez confirmed to me that he was born on Jan. 30, 1950, although he is widely cited as being 77), accepted life imprisonment and asset seizures of $15 billion. Yet while he accepted this vast sum (two billion more than with El Chapo), U.S. agents will still have to locate the money. However, Mayo’s help with that could potentially get him better prison conditions. Federal prosecutors had previously agreed to take the death penalty off the table. Mayo will still have a sentencing hearing, which is scheduled for January, 2026.
There has been widespread speculation in Mexican media that Mayo will give evidence against corrupt politicians south of the border in a time that the Trump administration has been attacking complicity between the Mexican government and cartels. However, such testimony from Mayo…
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