Ex-Mexican drug lord Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada denounces violence as he’s sentenced to life in prison

NEW YORK (AP) — Former Mexican drug kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was sentenced in a U.S. court on Monday to life in prison and called for an end to the brand of brutal violence he used for decades to grow the Sinaloa cartel into the world’s largest drug trafficking organization.

“Nobody wins in a war like this,” the 76-year-old Zambada said through a Spanish-language translator in Brooklyn federal court. He apologized “for the harm I caused and the example I set” and urged future generations to “choose a different path.”

“Violence must end,” the Sinaloa cartel co-founder said. “In Mexico and elsewhere affected by violence, too many lives are lost.”

But violence was Zambada’s “tool for more than three decades when it benefited him,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Amir said.

He ordered torture and plotted murders — including the killing of his own nephew — as the Sinaloa cartel flooded the U.S. with tons of cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine and other drugs, Amir said.

More than a million Americans died of overdoses during Zambada’s reign — many from drugs flowing from Mexico or the Sinaloa cartel, the prosecutor added.

Zambada’s punishment was guaranteed by his guilty plea last year to drug trafficking charges that carry a mandatory life sentence.

His sentencing was the culmination of the U.S. government’s yearslong fight to bring the long-elusive drug lord to justice. He was arrested in 2024 after he said he was kidnapped in Mexico and flown to Texas.

“The sentence here is kind of anticlimactic because I have no discretion,” Cogan said. “He is going to spend the rest of his days in prison. He accepts that.”

Cogan said he would recommend that Zambada be sent to a federal prison hospital where he can be treated for what his lawyer described as a “complex of age-related health issues.”

Zambada suffers from a number of “progressive illnesses” and his mental state is “drifting toward cognitively impaired,” Cogan said.

Judges often make recommendations about where inmates should serve time, but it’s up to the federal Bureau of Prisons to decide.

Zambada was seen as the cartel’s strategist and dealmaker and was more involved in its day-to-day operations than his co-founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who was convicted in 2019 and is serving a life sentence at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

Zambada pleaded guilty in August 2025 to charges of engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise and racketeering conspiracy, acknowledging culpability for 85 underlying crimes, after prosecutors said they wouldn’t seek the death penalty.

Perez stressed in court on Monday that he wasn’t cooperating with prosecutors.

Zambada, wearing a tan jail suit over an orange T-shirt, walked gingerly as deputy federal marshals escorted him to and from the courtroom, which was packed with drug enforcement agents and prosecution staff. The top federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, Miami and western Texas watched from the gallery.

Zambada read his remarks in Spanish from a piece of paper. He stared across the room, looking toward reporters and sketch artists in the jury box, and appeared to show no emotion as Cogan confirmed his sentence.

Along with a life sentence, he also faces $15 billion in financial penalties. Prosecutors said that reflected proceeds from the cartel’s crimes under his leadership, though they haven’t been able to identify or recover any assets.

Upon pleading guilty, Zambada said that from 1980 until last year, he and his cartel were responsible for transporting at least 1.5 million kilograms (3.3 million pounds) of cocaine, “most of which went to the United States.”

He acknowledged the scope of the Sinaloa operation, including underlings who built relationships with Colombian cocaine producers, oversaw importing cocaine to Mexico by boat and plane and smuggling the drug across the U.S.-Mexico border. He said the cartel raked in hundreds of millions of dollars a year and admitted that people working for him paid hefty bribes to Mexican officials “so they could operate freely.”

Months before his arrest, prosecutors said, Zambada ordered the killing of his nephew Eliseo Imperial Castro, also known as “Cheyo Antrax,” after learning that Castro was claiming to be collecting debts for Zambada and pocketing the money without Zambada’s permission.

In 2023, at least three people were killed in retaliatory violence that Zambada directed after a large cache of fentanyl pills, methamphetamine and cocaine was stolen from the cartel, prosecutors said.

According to Zambada’s lawyer, his arrest came after he was beaten, tied up, abducted and driven to a private plane by one of Guzmán’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López. Their arrests touched off deadly fighting in Sinaloa that pitted Zambada’s loyalists against backers of Guzmán’s sons, dubbed the Chapitos, or “little Chapos.”