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A son of notorious Mexican drug kingpin “El Chapo” pleaded guilty on Friday to US drug-trafficking charges, becoming the first of the drug lord’s sons to enter a plea deal.
Prosecutors allege Ovidio Guzmán López and his brother, Joaquín Guzmán López, ran a faction of the Sinaloa cartel. They became known locally as the “Chapitos”, or “little Chapos”, and federal authorities in 2023 described the operation as a major effort to send “staggering” quantities of fentanyl into the US.
As part of a plea agreement, Ovidio Guzmán López admitted to helping oversee the production and smuggling of large quantities of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and fentanyl into the United States, fueling a crisis that has contributed to tens of thousands of overdose deaths annually.
Ovidio Guzmán López pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering and firearms charges tied to his leadership role in the cartel. Terms of the deal, including sentencing recommendations or cooperation agreements, were not immediately disclosed.
Speculation about a deal had percolated for months, as behind-the-scenes negotiations quietly progressed.
Jeffrey Lichtman, an attorney for the two brothers, said on Friday he would wait until Ovidio Guzmán López was sentenced before discussing whether the agreement was a good deal.
Ovidio Guzmán López’s sentencing was postponed while he cooperates with US authorities, as he agreed to do on Friday. Whether he avoids a life in prison sentence depends on whether authorities say he has held up his end of the agreement.
Lichtman said he did not know whether the case against Joaquín Guzmán López could be resolved with a plea deal, noting that it was “completely different”.
“Remember, Joaquín was arrested in America well after Ovidio was, so it takes time,” he said.
Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School and former assistant US attorney in Los Angeles, said that Ovidio Guzmán López, by pleading guilty, may have “saved other family members”.
“In this way, he has some control over who he’s cooperating against and what the world will know about that cooperation.”
Levenson called the plea change a “big step” for the US. government and said Ovidio Guzmán López could provide “a roadmap of how to identify members of the cartel”.
“This is big,” she said. “The best way for them to take out the cartel is to find out about its operations from an insider, and that’s what they get from his cooperation.”
The Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, on Friday criticized the “lack of coherence” in American policy toward Mexican cartels, highlighting the disparity between the US government declaring cartels foreign terrorist organizations, but also striking plea deals with their leaders.
Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán is serving a life sentence after being convicted in 2019 for his role as the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, having smuggled mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States over 25 years. The brothers allegedly assumed their father’s former leadership role in the cartel.
Ovidio Guzmán López was arrested in Mexico in 2023 and extradited to the United States. He initially pleaded not guilty but had signaled in recent months his intent to change his plea.
Joaquín Guzmán López and another longtime Sinaloa leader, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, were arrested in July 2024 in Texas after they landed in the US on a private plane. Both men have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges. Their dramatic capture prompted a surge in violence in Mexico’s northern state of Sinaloa as two factions of the Sinaloa cartel clashed.
