Joaquin Guzman Lopez simply dropped the most important bombshell in cartel historical past, admitting in a Chicago courtroom that he kidnapped certainly one of Mexico’s most legendary drug lords to save lots of his personal pores and skin.

The 38-year-old son of infamous kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman pleaded responsible Monday to drug trafficking and persevering with legal enterprise prices, however the actual shocker got here when he confessed to orchestrating the kidnapping of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

This wasn’t simply any snatch-and-grab – this was the transfer that introduced down the 76-year-old co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel.

Prosecutor Lynn Erskine laid out the main points in courtroom, explaining how Guzman Lopez lured Zambada onto a aircraft in July beneath false pretenses, then flew straight to Texas, the place federal brokers had been ready.

The operation was designed to indicate cooperation with U.S. authorities – principally buying and selling the most important fish within the ocean for a lighter sentence.

“The defendant admitted to kidnapping an unnamed individual purported to be Zambada,” Erskine instructed the packed courtroom, in keeping with Reuters. The prosecutor made it clear this wasn’t some rogue operation – it was a calculated transfer by somebody determined to chop a deal.

The plea settlement might slash Guzman Lopez’s potential life sentence all the way down to one thing far more manageable.

He’s a minimal of 10 years, however with cooperation credit score, he may stroll out manner even earlier. That’s a hell of a trade-off for somebody who admitted to shifting tens of hundreds of kilograms of cocaine, heroin and fentanyl into the United States.

This complete saga reads like a film, which might be why Hip-Hop has been obsessive about El Chapo’s story for years.

50 Cent turned the cartel world into must-listen content material along with his “Surviving El Chapo” podcast, diving deep into the story of the Flores twins – Pedro and Margarito – who helped carry down the unique El Chapo.

His podcast explored how the Chicago-born twins went from dealing $2 billion worth of drugs to becoming government informants who secretly recorded conversations with El Chapo himself.

50 Cent even revealed he as soon as met the Flores twins at Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing undertaking when he was an up-and-coming star, lengthy earlier than they obtained concerned with worldwide drug trafficking.

But Guzman Lopez’s story is totally different. While the Flores twins flipped to keep away from large sentences, this kidnapping plot represents one thing unprecedented – a cartel inheritor actually delivering his father’s former associate to federal authorities.

Zambada had been a fugitive for many years, co-founding the Sinaloa cartel alongside El Chapo and constructing one of the highly effective drug empires in historical past.

Guzman Lopez has been in custody since that dramatic July arrest in Texas and his cooperation might present federal authorities with inside details about present cartel operations.

His brother Ovidio was additionally arrested and extradited to the U.S., that means the brand new technology of “Chapitos” is both behind bars or slicing offers.

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