Wife of ‘El Chapo’ is held on drug charge
The wife of the notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was arrested Monday at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia on charges related to her alleged involvement in international drug trafficking and her husband’s dramatic prison escapes, the U.S. Justice Department announced.
Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, a dual U.s.-mexican citizen of Sinaloa, Mexico, was charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana for importation into the United States with Guzmán’s Sinaloa Cartel, U.S. authorities said.
The department alleged that Coronel Aispuro conspired with others to assist Guzmán’s July 2015 escape from Mexico’s notorious Altiplano prison and that she engaged in planning another escape with others before Guzmán’s extradition in January 2017.
Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison in federal court in Brooklyn in July 2019.
An attorney for Coronel Aispuro could not be immediately located for comment.
Coronel Aispuro and the couple’s mythologized marriage gained notoriety during the trial, which she attended daily, at times blowing kisses to her husband from the reserved second-row seat. Coronel Aispuro was introduced at age 17 to Guzmán, then 49, by her father, Inés Coronel Barreras, a Sinaloa cartel lieutenant later sentenced to prison for trafficking drugs and firearms.