Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada, aged 76, was a kingpin in moving drugs into the US, was guaranteed the sentence following his guilty plea last year to trafficking charges17:02, 20 Jul 2026Updated 17:39, 20 Jul 2026Mexican drug kingpin Ismael Zambada García, also known as 'El Mayo,' has been jailed for life in the US after pleading guilty to trafficking vast quantities of cocaine and other substances as the head of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel.‌Zambada, 76, is one of the most high-profile cartel bosses to face justice in the United States, following his guilty plea last year to trafficking charges.‌The kingpin helped traffic tonnes of cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine and other drugs into the US for years before being arrested in 2024 after being kidnapped in Mexico and flown to Texas.‌As co-founder and leader of the Sinaloa cartel, one of the deadliest and most powerful narcotics organisations in the world, Zambada spent decades as one of the US government's most wanted criminals.“Nobody wins in a war like this,” Zambada said through a Spanish-language translator in Brooklyn federal court. He apologised “for the harm I caused and the example I set” and urged future generations to “choose a different path.”‌“Violence must end,” he said. “In Mexico and elsewhere affected by violence, too many lives are lost.” But violence was Zambada’s “tool for more than three decades when it benefited him,” Assistant US Attorney Adam Amir said.His sentencing is the culmination of the US government’s yearslong fight to bring the long-elusive Sinaloa cartel co-founder to justice.Zambada ordered torture and plotted murders as he and co-founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán grew the Sinaloa cartel into the world’s largest drug trafficking organization and flooded the US, prosecutors said.‌He was seen as the cartel’s strategist and dealmaker and was more involved in its day-to-day operations than the flamboyant Guzmán, who was convicted in 2019 and is serving a life sentence at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.“The sentence here is kind of anticlimactic because I have no discretion,” Judge Brian M. Cogan said. “He is going to spend the rest of his days in prison. He accepts that.”‌Cogan said he would recommend that Zambada be sent to a federal prison hospital where he can be treated for what his lawyer described as a “complex of age-related health issues.” Zambada suffers from a number of “progressive illnesses” and his mental state is “drifting toward cognitively impaired,” Cogan said.Zambada pleaded guilty in August 2025 after prosecutors said they wouldn’t seek the death penalty. Judges often make recommendations about where inmates should serve time, but it’s up to the federal Bureau of Prisons to decide.The defendant, wearing a tan jail suit over an orange T-shirt, walked gingerly as deputy federal marshals escorted him to and from the courtroom, which was packed with drug enforcement agents and prosecution staff. The top federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, Miami and western Texas watched from the gallery.‌Zambada read his remarks in Spanish from a piece of paper. He stared across the room, looking toward reporters and sketch artists in the jury box, and appeared to show no emotion as Cogan confirmed his sentence.Along with a life sentence, he also faces $15 billion in financial penalties. Prosecutors said that reflected proceeds from the cartel’s crimes under his leadership, though they haven’t been able to identify or recover any assets.Upon pleading guilty, Zambada said that from 1980 until last year, he and his cartel were responsible for transporting at least 1.5 million kilogrammes of cocaine, “most of which went to the United States.”‌He acknowledged the scope of the Sinaloa operation, including underlings who built relationships with Colombian cocaine producers, oversaw importing cocaine to Mexico by boat and plane and smuggling the drug across the US-Mexico border. He said the cartel raked in hundreds of millions of dollars a year and admitted that people working for him paid hefty bribes to Mexican officials “so they could operate freely.”Months before his arrest, prosecutors said, Zambada ordered the killing of his nephew Eliseo Imperial Castro, also known as “Cheyo Antrax,” after learning that Castro was claiming to be collecting debts for Zambada and pocketing the money without Zambada’s permission.In 2023, at least three people were killed in retaliatory violence that Zambada directed after a large cache of fentanyl pills, methamphetamine and cocaine was stolen from the cartel, prosecutors said.Article continues belowAccording to Zambada’s lawyer, his arrest came after he was beaten, tied up, abducted and driven to a private plane by one of Guzmán’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López. Their arrests touched off deadly fighting in Sinaloa that pitted Zambada’s loyalists against backers of Guzmán’s sons, dubbed the Chapitos, or “little Chapos.”