El Chapo is one of the most notorious drug dealers and, later, Cartel leaders of the last years! He is now moved to a Supermax prison.
So let’s find out some interesting facts about this Cartel leader’s life!
- His full name is Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera
- He was born on 4 April 1957
- He is a Mexican drug lord
- He was a former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel
- Sinaloa Cartel was a criminal organization named after the Mexican Pacific coast state of Sinaloa
- There it was formed
- He is known as “El Chapo”
- In english that means “Shorty”
- His nickname is because of his 168 cm (5 ft 6 in) stature
- Guzmán became Mexico’s top drug kingpin in 2003
- He beacame a drug kingpin after the arrest of his rival Osiel Cárdenas Guillén of the Gulf Cartel
- He was considered the “most powerful drug trafficker in the world” by the U.S. Department of the Treasury
- Each year from 2009 to 2013, Forbes magazine ranked El Chapo as one of the most powerful people in the world
- His rankings where 41st, 60th, 55th, and 67th respectively
- He was thus the second most powerful man in Mexico
- The magazine also calls him the “biggest drug lord of all time”
- The U.S. federal government considers El Chapo “the most ruthless, dangerous, and feared man on the planet”
- The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimated that he matched the influence and reach of Pablo Escobar
- He was also onsidered “the godfather of the drug world”
- In 2013, the Chicago Crime Commission named Guzmán “Public Enemy Number One”
- This came from the influence of his criminal network in Chicago
- The last person to receive such notoriety was Al Capone in 1930
- El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel transports multi- ton cocaine shipments from Colombia through Mexico to the United States
- He has distribution cells throughout the U.S.
- The organization has been involved in the production, smuggling, and distribution of Mexican methamphetamine, marijuana, ecstasy (MDMA) and heroin throughout America and Europe
- By the time of his 2014 arrest, El Chapo had exported more drugs to the United States than any other trafficker
- These include more than 500 tons (500,000 kg) of cocaine
- El Chapo was first captured in 1993 in Guatemala
- He was extradited and sentenced to 20 years in prison in Mexico for murder and drug trafficking
- He bribed prison guards and escaped from a federal maximum-security prison in 2001
- He was wanted by the governments of Mexico and the United States
- He was also wanted by INTERPOL
- The U.S. offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture
- The Mexican government offered a reward of 60 million pesos
- This is approximately $3.8 million
- He was arrested a second time in Mexico on 22 February 2014
- He was found inside a fourth- floor condominium in Mazatlán, Sinaloa
- El Chapo was captured without any gunshots
- Guzmán escaped again in July 2015 through a 1.5 km (0.93 mi) tunnel that led to a construction site
- He was recaptured by Mexican marines and Federal Police following a shoot- out on 8 January 2016
- He was extradited to the United States on 19 January 2017
- There he faced criminal charges related to his leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel
- He was found guilty by a jury in Brooklyn on 12 February 2019
- He was found guilty of all drug trafficking counts
- He is expected to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole
- His sentencing hearing is scheduled for 25 June 2019
- He is currently been moved to a Supermax prison
- Guzmán’s family is heavily involved in drug trafficking
- Several members of his family, including his brother, one of his sons, and a nephew were killed by Sinaloa’s archrival cartels
- Los Zetas and the Beltrán Leyva Organization
- In 1977, El Chapo married Alejandrina María Salazar Hernández in a small ceremony in the town of Jesús María, Sinaloa
- They had at least three children
- They were César, Iván Archivaldo, and Jesús Alfredo
- He set them up in a ranch home in Jesús María
- When he was 30 years old, El Chapo fell in love with a bank clerk, Estela Peña of Nayarit
- Ηe kidnapped and had sexual relations with
- They later got married
- In the mid- 1980s, Guzmán married once more
- He married to Griselda López Pérez
- They had four children
- They were Édgar, Joaquín, Ovidio, and Griselda Guadalupe
- Guzmán’s sons followed him into the drug business
- His third wife, López Pérez, was arrested in 2010, in Culiacán
- In November 2007, El Chapo married an 18- year- old American beauty queen, Emma Coronel Aispuro
- She is the daughter of one of his top deputies, Inés Coronel Barreras, in Canelas, Durango
- In August 2011, she gave birth to twin girls, Maria Joaquina and Emali Guadalupe, in Los Angeles County Hospital, in California
- In 2012, Alejandrina Gisselle Guzmán Salazar, a 31- year- old pregnant physician and Mexican citizen from Guadalajara, was said to have claimed she was Guzmán’s daughter
- She was crossing the U.S. border into San Diego
- In 2017, Netflix and Univision began co- producing the series El Chapo about the life of Guzmán
- The series premiered on Sunday, 23 April 2017 at 8PM/7C on Univision
- It was followed by a 20- minute Facebook Live after- show titled “El Chapo Ilimitado”
- El Chapo is also portrayed by Alejandro Edda in the Netflix television series Narcos: Mexico
- Martin Corona is the chief assassin for a rival cartel of Sinaloa’s who mistakenly killed a priest when aiming at El Chapo
- He published a tell- all memoir titled Confessions of a Cartel Hit Man in 2017
- Some American artists have made songs with references to El Chapo, such as the rappers Uncle Murda, Skrillex, YG, Gucci Mane and The Game
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