Will cartel boss spill corruption secrets?

For more than four decades, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada ruled from the shadows.

- KEEGAN HAMILTON

ISMAEL "EL MAYO" ZAMBADA of the Sinaloa cartel, seen on Mexican newspaper covers in 2024, has pleaded guilty in a U.S. court.

While other top Mexican drug traffickers were killed or extradited to the United States, Zambada remained comfortably ensconced atop his empire, exporting cocaine, meth, heroin and fentanyl around the globe from his stronghold in the state of Sinaloa.

Long after the downfall of his Sinaloa cartel partner, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Zambada continued to operate with impunity, always a step ahead of the law until eventually it caught up to him too.

Now the question is whether he'll take others down with him.

Before a federal judge in a Brooklyn courtroom on Monday, Zambada, 75, pleaded guilty to an array of charges for leading a “continuing criminal enterprise” from the late 1980s until his arrest last year. He admitted to money laundering, racketeering and smuggling massive quantities of drugs.

In a courtroom packed with journalists and U.S. law enforcement officials who spent years hunting him, Zambada appeared dressed in blue-and-orange jail scrubs, with silver hair slicked back and a neatly trimmed beard.

Asked by U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan whether he understood the implication of his guilty plea which carries a mandatory life sentence with no chance for parole Zambada addressed the court, reading prepared remarks in Spanish.

He said that he quit school after the sixth grade and got his start selling marijuana at age 19 in Sinaloa. He graduated to cocaine, trafficking an estimated 1.5 million kilos over the years, “most of which went to the U.S.”