A MEXICAN ‘BULL’
El Chapo’s top aide extradited & may turn rat
A former right-hand man of accused Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was extradited Friday to the United States — where he could, like infamous mob turncoat Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, turn rat against his exboss, authorities said.
High-ranking Sinaloa cartel member Damaso Lopez, who has been in Mexican custody for the past year, was flown from the border city of Ciudad Juarez to Virginia, where he is facing charges of money laundering and conspiring to distribute cocaine.
His location was not disclosed for security reasons, officials said.
Alberto Elias Beltran, Mexico’s acting attorney general, called Lopez “potentially a key witness” against Guzman, who is set to go on trial in September in Brooklyn federal court — the same court where Gravano testified against “Dapper Don” John Gotti in 1992 and helped put the Gambino crime boss behind bars for life.
Both Guzman and Lopez face life behind bars if convicted.
Lopez, nicknamed “El Licenciado” — a title for college graduates, especially those focused on law, which he studied— was once a key aide of Guzman’s and crucial to the cartel leader’s 2001 prison break, local authorities have said.
After El Chapo’s 2016 arrest, Lopez allegedly kicked off a bloody turf war with Guzman’s sons over control of the cartel. He has been blamed by Mexican officials for a spate of violence in the coastal regions of Sinaloa and Baja California — notably a series of slayings in Los Cabos — while trying to cement his hold on the drug gang.
El Chapo, whose nickname means “Shorty,” was extradited to the US in January 2017 and hit with charges related to international trafficking.
News of Lopez’s extradition came the same day a Brooklyn federal judge ruled El Chapo won’t be getting the names of the US government’s confidential informants against him.
The order from Judge Brian Cogan came after Guzman’s lawyers asked that prosecutors overseeing his upcoming trial provide more than just summaries of the evidence they’ve collected.
Cogan sided with the government, saying that because the mysterious information is not “exculpatory or impeachable,” the defense is not obligated to receive it.
El Chapo is due back in court Aug. 4.