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Wife of drug kingpin ‘El Chapo’ gets 3 years on US charges

Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, “worked closely with the command-and-control structure” of the Sinaloa cartel and conspired to distribute large quantities of drugs.

WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — The wife of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison after pleading guilty to helping her husband run his multibillion-dollar criminal empire. 

Emma Coronel Aispuro also helped her husband plan a dramatic escape through a tunnel dug underneath a prison in Mexico in 2015 by smuggling a GPS watch to him disguised as a food item. 

Editor's note: The video in this story originally aired on June 10, 2021

Prosecutors had asked for four years in prison during a hearing in federal court in Washington, but U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras imposed a shorter term, saying her role was a small piece of a much larger organization.

The charges include knowingly and willfully conspiring to distribute heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine for several years. She also pleaded guilty to a money-laundering conspiracy charge and to engaging in transactions with a foreign narcotics trafficker.

The 31-year-old was arrested in February at Dulles International Airport in Virginia and has been jailed since then.

“She is very happy to put this behind her,” Coronel Aispuro’s attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, said outside the courthouse in February. “She didn’t expect to get arrested after her husband received life in prison. So, this is obviously a troubling time. But we’re going to get past it.”

Prosecutors have alleged Coronel Aispuro “worked closely with the command-and-control structure” of the Sinaloa cartel and conspired to distribute large quantities of drugs, knowing they would be smuggled into the U.S.

As Mexico’s most powerful drug lord, Guzman ran a cartel responsible for smuggling cocaine and other drugs into the United States during his 25-year reign, prosecutors say. They also said his “army of sicarios,” or “hit men,” was under orders to kidnap, torture and kill anyone who got in his way.

The prosecutor, Anthony Nardozzi, said his wife had “aided and abetted” the Sinaloa cartel’s objectives to smuggle drugs into the U.S. and helped to import more than 450,000 kilograms of cocaine, 90,000 kilograms of heroin, 45,000 kilograms of methamphetamine and about 90,000 kilograms of marijuana.

Lichtman insisted that Coronel Aisupro was a “very minimal participant” in the drug empire. “She was a very small part of this much larger thing,” he said

Her arrest earlier this year was a surprise in part because authorities had made no move to arrest her over the past two years, even after she was implicated in her husband’s crimes. During Guzman’s trial in 2019, prosecutors said she helped orchestrate Guzman’s two prison breaks in Mexico.

 

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