Ismail Sambada Garcia, the former leader of the Sinaloa drug trafficking cartel in Mexico, reached a plea agreement with the US prosecutor on the 25th, thus avoiding the death penalty, but facing life imprisonment.
According to several media reports such as Associated Press, Mr. Zambada acknowledged several charges such as drug smuggling in a federal court in New York on the same day.Under the confession agreement, Mr. Zambada's $15 billion illegal income will be confiscated.The court is scheduled to judge in January next year, and Mr. Zambada faces life imprisonment.
The 75-year-old, who had been sought by U.S. law enforcement for more than 20 years, was arrested in July last year along with the son of Sinaloa’s former drug dealer, Wang Gusman, after arriving on a plane from Mexico to El Paso, Texas.
Mr. Sambada said in court on Thursday that the drug group smuggled about 1.5 million kilograms of cocaine between 1980 and last year, most of which went to the United States.
Last September, Sambada pleaded not guilty to 17 federal criminal charges including murder and drug smuggling in the United States.
Founded by Sambada and Guzman, Sinaloa is one of the world’s largest drug crime groups. Guzman has been convicted of 10 charges of drug trafficking, murder and money laundering in 2018 and was sentenced to life imprisonment and a fine of $12.6 billion in 2019 and is now serving in the highest security prison in the United States.