Wife of ‘El Chapo’ gets 3 years in prison

WASHINGTON — Two years after the Mexican drug lord nicknamed “El Chapo” began serving life behind bars in the United States, his wife, who admitted taking part in his multibillion-dollar smuggling operation and aiding his notorious 2015 tunnel escape from a Mexican prison, was sentenced Tuesday to 36 months in a federal penitentiary.

Emma Coronel Aispuro, whose husband, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, reigned for years as boss of Mexico’s murderous Sinaloa Cartel, pleaded guilty in June to three charges in U.S. District Court in Washington, including conspiracy to distribute 100 tons of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines.

“I address you today to express my true regret ... and ask that you and all the citizens of this country forgive me,” Coronel, 32, told Judge Rudolph Contreras in Spanish. Speaking through an interpreter, she said, “I am sorry.”

The Justice Department and Coronel’s lawyers agreed that advisory sentencing guidelines in her case called for prison time in the range of 51 to 71 months. A prosecutor recommended only 48 months, noting that Coronel was a small “cog in a very large wheel of a powerful criminal organization” and that she “quickly accepted responsibility” after her February arrest.

But defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman asked for more leniency, saying Coronel, a former beauty queen, married El Chapo on her 18th birthday, when he was 49, and spent her adulthood under his sway. “Her involvement ... was in many ways just being Joaquín Guzmán’s wife,” Mr. Lichtman said, arguing that her role in the organization should be “judged through the lens of how she entered it.”

Contreras, in giving her 36 months, indicated he agreed.

As part of a plea deal, Coronel admitted she helped her husband, now 64, keep control of the Sinaloa Cartel from his cell in a supposedly high-security Mexican prison before his escape in July 2015..

She acknowledged she received $1 million in heroin proceeds that were owed to Guzmán and used intermediaries to distribute some of the cash as bribes to ensure favorable treatment for him in the prison, known as Altiplano, near Mexico City.