El Chapo’s wife Emma Coronel is released from jail after she plead guilty to helping run his billion-dollar drug empire. Details explored.
International crime syndicate, El Chapo (real name: Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera) is best known as a Mexican former drug lord and a former leader within the Sinaloa Cartel.
He is considered to have been one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world.
Since 2007, the notorious convicted criminal, who is serving life sentence, has been married to his spouse, Emma Coronel, who was an American former teenage beauty queen.
His spouse Emma (real name: Emma Modesta Coronel Aispuro) was also arrested in connection to Chapo’s prison escape as well as other charges like drug trafficking and money laundering.
On Wednesday, September 13, 2023, she was released after serving part of her three-year sentence. Following that, many might want to know what exactly landed her in jail and more about her relationship with El Chapo. Read on for more.
Why was Emma Coronel arrested?
The 34-year-old was accused of helping her husband, 66, to run the drug empire and helping him to escape from a max-security Mexican prison in 2015.
After her arrest, experts suspected that she would give up key information on the Sinaloa cartel to avoid conviction, but a person familiar with the case told the Times that talking was not part of the agreement.
During her sentencing, Coronel, a dual US-Mexican citizen, expressed remorse for her involvement with Guzman and the Sinaloa Cartel and the damage she may have caused.
In addition to being suspected of helping her husband escape from prison in 2015, she’s also suspected of plotting to bribe a top Mexican official when El Chapo was recaptured in 2016.
Before that plan could be carried out, however, El Chapo was extradited to the US.
Last month, El Chapo reportedly sent a handwritten letter requesting his wife and their two daughters be allowed to visit him in the maximum security prison he is being held in Oregon.
He was found guilty in 2019 of running the Sinaloa cartel and is estimated by US law enforcement officials to have smuggled over 1,000 tonnes of cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamines and heroin into the US.
Prosecutors called him a “ruthless and bloodthirsty leader” of the cartel.
The notorious Sinaloa cartel’s hitmen reportedly kidnapped, tortured and murdered members of rival gangs to gain their elite reputation.
How did Emma Coronel and El Chapo meet?
Emma Coronel and El Chapo have been married for more than a decade since 2007. Before their nuptial, they dated for years around 1972, when she was a teenager.
Coronel, also known as the “Narco Princess”, is believed to have met Guzman when she was just 17 years old while competing in a local beauty pageant.
El Chapo is said to have fallen in love with Emma Coronel when he saw her competing – and he was 47 years old at the time.
In an interview with the LA Times she said: “I would say what won me over was his way of talking, how he treated me, the way we began to get along – first as friends and from that came everything else.
“He tends to win over people by his manner of being, of acting, the way he treats people in general.”
Her rancher father, Inés Coronel Barreras, is said to have cultivated marijuana and opium poppies and her uncle is slain drug kingpin Igancio Nacho Coronel, an important member of the Sinaloa Cartel and one of El Chapo’s most trusted men.
Colonel travelled to California in 2011 to give birth to the couple’s twin daughters – meaning their kids have US citizenship.
Details about El Chapo’s arrest
In 2014, the Mexican drug lord was arrested after a major 13-year manhunt and sent to the Altiplano maximum security jail in Mexico.
But he managed to flee 17 months later by using a motorcycle in tracks that led to a local warehouse.
Colonel was alleged to have played a key role in his escape, according to prosecutors at her trial.
She was also accused of being a messenger for her husband both during his time on the run and in prison through sharing orders to his cartel members and to his sons with his previous wives, who are known as the Chapitos (Little Chapos).
After a tunnel escape in 2015, Guzman managed to dodge being captured for six months before Mexican special forces caught him in Sinaloa.
He was finally found guilty in February 2019 and Colonel remained free for nearly two years after until she was arrested at Dulles airport, near Washington DC, in February 2021.
Prosecutors said she was well aware of her husband’s criminal activities and “understood the scope of the Sinaloa cartel’s drug trafficking”.
She pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering.
At her sentencing, Coronel requested leniency for the sake of her children.
“I beg you to not allow them to grow up without the presence of a mother,” she told the judge.
When was Emma Coronel released from prison?
El Chapo’s wife has been released from jail on Wednesday, September 13, 2023, after she pleaded guilty to helping him run his billion-dollar drug empire.
Emma Coronel admitted to drug trafficking in November 2021 but has been released early from her initial three year sentence, according to The Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The wife of the reportedly left her halfway house in California, where she was moved to from federal prison in June.
Although her future plans remain unclear after today’s release, it is thought she may travel to Oregon to visit her husband after his recent letters.