# El Mayo Zambada pleads guilty and says he is sorry for decades of drug trafficking
On Aug. 25, 2025, former Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael El Mayo Zambada stood in a Brooklyn federal courtroom, pleaded guilty to U.S. drug trafficking charges and said he was sorry for helping flood the United States with cocaine, heroin and other illicit drugs. The 75-year-old man prosecutors have long described as one of the most important figures in global narcotics trafficking said he took responsibility and expected to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Zambada's admission was striking both for its scale and its tone. Speaking through a Spanish-language interpreter, he said the cartel he helped build had done great harm to people in the United States, Mexico and elsewhere. He also apologized to everyone affected by his actions. In court, he used the Spanish word culpable when entering his plea, acknowledging guilt in a case that had drawn intense attention on both sides of the border.
Prosecutors said Zambada and Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán transformed the Sinaloa cartel from a regional group into the world's largest drug trafficking organization. Zambada admitted that the network moved cocaine from Colombia by boat and plane, crossed it over the U.S.-Mexico border and generated hundreds of millions of dollars a year. He also acknowledged that people working for him paid bribes to Mexican police and military commanders so the cartel could operate freely.
The plea gave U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi a chance to declare a win in a long-running anti-cartel campaign. She called the case a landmark victory and said Zambada would die in a U.S. federal prison. Her comments underscored the Trump administration's broader approach, which has treated cartels as terrorist organizations and leaned on law-enforcement pressure, military assets and diplomatic leverage to pursue top figures. The case also fits a broader U.S. effort to show that the most notorious cartel leaders can eventually be brought to heel.
Zambada's path to the courtroom was as dramatic as the plea itself. He was arrested in Texas last year after arriving in a private plane with Joaquín Guzmán López, one of Guzmán's sons. Zambada says he was kidnapped in Mexico and taken to the United States against his will. His arrest, and the arrest of Guzmán López, sparked deadly fighting in Sinaloa between Zambada loyalists and the faction aligned with Guzmán's sons. In the state capital of Culiacan, the violence has left bodies in the streets and forced businesses to close early as residents try to stay off the roads after dark.
Two weeks before the plea, prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty. Zambada's lawyer said the deal does not require him to cooperate with investigators, and Bondi noted that Mexico's opposition to capital punishment is a factor in extradition cases. The terms make clear that the plea was about finality, not a broader cooperation agreement. Zambada is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 13 and also faces billions of dollars in financial penalties.
In his court remarks, he traced his criminal life back to his teenage years, saying he began planting marijuana in 1969 after leaving school with a sixth-grade education and later moved into heroin and especially cocaine. Prosecutors said he and the cartel transported at least 1.5 million kilograms of cocaine from 1980 until last year, with most of it going to the United States. For a man who spent decades avoiding capture, the final chapter is now a prison sentence and a public admission of responsibility.
