Make El Chapo pay for wall? Don’t count on it

After El Chapo’s conviction in a drugtrafficking trial that included florid testimony of jewel-encrusted guns, a fleet of cash-laden jets and a personal zoo with roaming big cats, some Americans have floated an idea they see as poetic justice: Why not take some of the Mexican drug lord’s billions in ill-gotten gains and make him pay for a border wall?

That may be a tall order, especially since federal officials can’t say for sure how much Joaquin Guzman may still have from his decades of smuggling drugs into the U.S., or how exactly they intend to get their hands on it.

For now, the U.S. Department of Justice says it will be seeking forfeiture of a fortune that Guzman’s indictment valued at $14 billion. Authorities won’t say how they came up with that figure, but experts say it is likely based on evidence of the value of the proceeds of massive drug shipments and whatever assets were used as part of the trafficking enterprise.

With Guzman, who faces life in prison for smuggling tons of heroin, meth, fentanyl and marijuana into the U.S., authorities know their forfeiture estimate is partly symbolic, to send a message to other traffickers that a conviction could cost them their fortune as well as their freedom, said Duncan Levin, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in forfeiture.

“It’s obvious he doesn’t have $14 billion,” Levin said. “And whatever he has may be largely uncollectable.”