Then-Public Enemy No. 1 Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, Guzmán López’s father, was ultimately convicted by a jury in New York in 2019 and is now serving a life sentence in a supermax prison in Colorado.
Also charged in that original 2009 case was El Chapo associate Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia, whose extraordinary 50-year career of avoiding arrest came to a shocking end last month when he arrived at a small airport near El Paso, Texas, on a private plane alongside his rival, Guzman Lopez, prompting accusations that Mayo had been kidnapped and brought to U.S. soil against his will.
It is unclear where El Mayo, who is charged in several different jurisdictions, will ultimately be tried.
But despite the unanswered questions and the still-unfolding international drama, the indictment filed in Chicago against Guzmán López and his three brothers, collectively known as “Los Chapitos,” is a stark reminder of why Chicago has been such a major factor in major cartel charges from the beginning.
In many ways, the Chicago area serves as a drug dealer’s dream. For years, its central location and vast transportation networks have made the city a key narcotics distribution hub, according to federal authorities and witnesses. Thousands of tons of drugs have passed through the city over the decades, hidden in vehicle compartments, in suburban safe houses and in semitrailer loads carrying everything from avocados to live sheep.
The cartels have also made use of entrenched street gangs in the city, who have proven more than capable of breaking down the product and delivering it on the streets.
Pedro Flores, the Little Village-born drug trafficker who, along with his twin brother, Margarito, helped U.S. authorities bring charges against more than a dozen cartel leaders, testified at El Chapo’s 2018 trial about the importance of his hometown to the Sinaloa operation.
“I think being the third largest city in the United States is important,” Flores testified. “Also is its geographic location. It’s practically located in the center of our country, which makes it convenient, you know, you’re halfway to everywhere, and logistically the infrastructure of rail systems, highways, airports, waterways, makes it ideal, not just for drugs but for any type of goods.”
Flores’ testimony also brought a distinct Chicago flavor to the New York jury when he was asked on the witness stand about a phone number he repeatedly dialed from Mexico to test new cellphones for his team.
“I’m sorry, 588-2300. What is that?” prosecutors asked Flores.
“That’s the Empire Carpet number,” Flores said, not mentioning the ubiquitous jingle that has been on Chicago airwaves since the 1970s.
Why did he call Empire Carpet?
“It’s just a habit I got into,” Flores testified. “I call a neutral number to make sure the phone is working and I used to always dial that number.”
The superseding indictment against Guzmán López and his brothers, which was filed last year, is a case study of how the Sinaloa cartel allegedly exploited the city’s characteristics and transformed its distribution capabilities from a makeshift enterprise into a well-oiled machine that Amazon might envy.
According to the indictment, from 2008 to 2023, the Chapitos helped their father and El Mayo coordinate shipments of cocaine and “chemical precursors” to Mexico from Central and South American countries using airplanes, submarines, speedboats, tractor-trailers and other means.
The cartel then used its vast network of couriers to ship multi-ton loads of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine across the border into the United States, where the drugs were stored in warehouses and stash houses before being transported across the country, including to Chicago, “using various means, including automobiles, trucks, rail cars, and private and commercial interstate carriers,” according to the indictment.
The drugs were then sold to wholesale customers and the proceeds were laundered back to Mexico in cash, wire transfers, bank deposits and through the purchase and transfer of high-value items such as helicopters and airplanes, according to the indictment.
The sons allegedly furthered the conspiracy by bribing public officials and using firearms and other dangerous weapons to commit acts of violence, including murder, kidnapping and assault “against law enforcement, rival drug dealers and members of their own trafficking organization,” the indictment alleged.
Three of the four alleged murders described in the indictment occurred in Mexico, including the October 2010 killing of rival hitman Israel Rincón Martínez, also known as “El Guacho,” after a failed attempt to kill one of Guzmán’s sons. A Sinaloa cartel operative testified at El Chapo’s 2018 trial that Martínez was captured and tortured to death.
The indictment also alleged that the Chapitos played a role in the May 2021 murder of Mario Nungaray Bobadilla, who was shot to death outside his Phoenix home.
In outlining the charges last year, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland described the Sinaloa cartel’s violence and how its members have tortured perceived enemies, including Mexican law enforcement officials. In some cases, cartel members have also fed victims, some still alive, to tigers owned by Guzman’s sons, Garland said.
Garland also accused Guzman’s sons of being major exporters of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid, to the U.S. market, although the Chicago indictment does not specifically mention fentanyl.
Last year, one of the Chapitos, Ovidio Guzmán López, was extradited to the United States after his arrest in a violent shootout in Mexico. He is currently being held without bail.
Both brothers are represented by the same New York-based attorney who served as their father’s lead defense attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman.
At his arraignment Tuesday, Joaquin Guzman Lopez told U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman that he had been informed of the potential conflicts of having the same attorney as his brother and agreed to waive them.
Both brothers are scheduled to appear at a status hearing before Coleman on Sept. 30.
After court, Lichtman insisted that despite his new client’s apparent voluntary trip to the United States, he is not cooperating with federal prosecutors. “We have no agreement with the government,” he said. “There has never been an agreement with the government with Joaquin Guzman Lopez. Period.”
Asked whether Ovidio might be cooperating, Lichtman did not respond. But he said the fact that he represents both brothers “is not unusual.”
“It means that because I represent both of them, there are certain defenses that I theoretically might not be able to pursue because I can’t represent one and harm the other,” Lichtman said. “I have a duty of loyalty to both of them … but as you can see, the judge and the government don’t have much of a problem with that.”
The other two Chapitos accused in Chicago, Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar and Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar, remain at large.
Meanwhile, El Mayo remains in custody in El Paso, where he was arrested on July 25. At a brief court hearing Thursday, the judge agreed to set extended discovery deadlines and ordered the parties to return to court for a status hearing on Sept. 9.
While Mayo’s case may not move forward in Chicago, his alleged dealings with the Flores twins — two of the biggest drug dealers the city has ever produced — formed the backbone of the indictment filed against him in the Northern District of Illinois in 2009.
According to prosecution documents in that case, the twins first met face-to-face with Zambada Garcia in May 2005 in the Sinaloa capital of Culiacan, where they reached an agreement to pay a debt they owed related to the purchase of a narcotics shipment from a lieutenant working for El Mayo’s organization.
Over several days of discussions, the twins negotiated a deal with El Mayo, his son, Vicente Zambada Niebla, and other top figures in El Mayo’s faction to traffic hundreds of kilograms a week of the Sinaloa cartel’s cocaine and heroin through Chicago and Los Angeles, prosecutors say.
It wasn’t until later that the twins were informed that El Chapo also wanted to meet with them, according to court records.
They were flown from an airstrip near Culiacan to El Chapo’s mountaintop compound, where he allegedly told the twins “that he would honor the same agreement” they had reached with Zambada Garcia, according to prosecutors’ documents.
By 2008, the twins had begun their dangerous cooperation with U.S. law enforcement, using Radio Shack tape recorders to record conversations and also trying to get Sinaloa leaders to talk on the phone while they were still living in Mexico and trafficking drugs. Although they managed to record El Chapo and several others, Pedro Flores testified at El Chapo’s trial that they never saw the same opportunity with Zambada Garcia.
“Now, sir, were you asked to try to make a call, a recorded call with Mayo Zambada?” one of Chapo Guzmán’s defense attorneys asked during cross-examination.
“Yes, I was initially asked,” Flores testified, adding that he didn’t think he could pull it off, despite urgings from Drug Enforcement Administration agents. “From my experience with him, he never got on the phone with me. And I only saw him on the phone on two occasions.”
“So, you didn’t think it was a reasonable effort to get him on the phone and record him, correct?” the attorney asked Flores.
“Correct”.
The twins’ cooperation also included a chilling meeting in October 2008, when Margarito Flores was flown to the Sinaloa mountaintop compound to speak with Chapo, Mayo, Zambada Niebla and others. Margarito Flores told authorities that Mayo was allegedly seeking revenge after his brother’s arrest by Mexican authorities.
“This government is letting the gringos do whatever they want,” El Mayo said, according to Margarito Flores’ account of the meeting with authorities. “It will be good to send a message to the gringos.”
Flores told authorities that El Chapo proposed discussing a plot to attack a U.S. or Mexican government or media building in retaliation. According to Flores’ account, Zambada Niebla turned to him and asked if he could find someone who could provide him with “large, powerful weapons” to carry out the proposed attack.
“We don’t want Middle Eastern or Asian weapons, we want big American weapons or RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades),” Zambada Niebla said, according to Flores’ account of the conversation. “We don’t need one, we need many of them.”
Court records show Flores later secretly recorded a phone conversation
with Zambada Niebla, telling him he had an ex-military source for the weapons, but that they were going to cost twice as much as originally thought.
“Okay, just let me know,” Zambada Niebla responded in the Nov. 29, 2008, call, according to court records.
“OK, we’re all set then,” Margarito replied. “Tell everyone I said ‘Hi.’”
Immediately after hanging up, Flores recorded a post-script for the call, according to court records:
“That was a call with Vicente Zambada. He is the son of Mayo Zambada.”
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