Sinaloa Cartel co-founder Ismael «El Mayo» Zambada Garcia, of Mexico, was sentenced on Monday to life in a U.S. prison and ordered to forfeit $15 billion in drug trafficking profits, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said that while he had no choice but to give a life sentence since the charges carried a mandatory term of life imprisonment, he believed it was the right punishment.

«The almost unimaginable amount of drugs attributable to him and the number of murders that we can document is enough to justify Congress’s decision to make this a mandatory life sentence,» the judge said.

He is one of the most high-profile Mexican drug traffickers to be sentenced by a U.S. judge since fellow Sinaloa leader Joaquin «El Chapo» Guzman was sentenced to life in prison in 2019.

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Garcia, 76, agreed to plead guilty in August 2025 to multiple charges, including racketeering conspiracy and continuing criminal enterprise, after the DOJ said it would not pursue the death penalty.

He was arrested in July 2024 alongside Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of Guzman’s sons, after their plane landed in the U.S. Guzman Lopez has since pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including drug trafficking and a July 2024 kidnapping.

Joseph Nocella, a federal prosecutor, told reporters after Garcia’s sentencing that Guzman Lopez had admitted to kidnapping Garcia in an attempt to secure leniency and credit from U.S. law enforcement.

A reward sign for former Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael «El Mayo» Zambada Garcia standing next to a Beechcraft King Air aircraft, used in July 2024 to transport Garcia and Joaquin Guzman Lopez, the son of notorious narco leader «El Chapo» Guzman, at the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. (REUTERS/Paul Ratje)

«The United States made perfectly clear that we do not condone kidnapping and that he would receive no credit,» Nocella said.

Guzman Lopez has not yet been sentenced.

Garcia told the court during his sentencing on Monday that he took responsibility for the harm he had caused.

«No one wins in a war like this. To the next generation, I say, choose a different path,» he said.

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Cogan suggested that Garcia be placed in a facility where he would receive adequate medical care since he was suffering from several progressive health ailments.

«Ismael Zambada Garcia spent nearly four decades poisoning American communities to make billions of dollars in profit and ordering the murders of anyone who stood in his way. Today, that chapter closes for good,» Nocella said in a statement.

Sinaloa Cartel co-founder Ismael «El  Mayo» Zambada Garcia was sentenced to life in a U.S. prison. (REUTERS/Gustavo Graf)

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«He will spend the rest of his life in a U.S. prison, exactly where he belongs,» he added. This sentence was made possible by the tireless bilateral cooperation between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement, who refused to let El Mayo’s years of evading justice become a permanent state of affairs. We hope that today’s sentence brings some measure of justice to the countless victims of the Sinaloa Cartel’s narcotics trafficking and violence.»

Reuters contributed to this report.

El arresto

Fricciones diplomáticas

Agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were preparing to question a British zoologist and disease ecology expert upon his return to the United States from the World Health Organization’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, before the FBI intervened and asked agents to stand down, according to files released Monday by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

«They told the public a COVID lab leak ‘wasn’t plausible,’» Rand wrote on X. «Their own private messages say otherwise. Today I’m launching The Reading Room where the public can review records related to my ongoing investigation – not just conclusions but the actual documents.»

The documents show CBP’s National Targeting Center flagged Peter Daszak as «a high person of interest» ahead of his Feb. 5, 2021, arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Daszak, the former president of EcoHealth Alliance, was flagged because of more than 15 years of collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and his longstanding relationship with its lead researcher, Zhengli Shi, as well as his role as principal investigator on National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants funding bat coronavirus research in China.

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Much of the funding Daszak received was put toward gain-of-function research, the documents state.

The documents highlight that the NIH had asked Daszak to retrieve the original type-specimen used by WIV for genetic analysis and return it to the U.S., as well as to explain several aspects of his collaboration with the lab, including providing related cell phone data.

CBP officials planned to question Daszak on his activities in China, his contacts at the WIV, and whether he illegally collected or carried biological samples.

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WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 04: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questions National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci during a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee about the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on November 04, 2021 in Washington, DC. Paul called on Fauci to resign and accused him of lying about the work done in a lab in Wuhan, China. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Internal communications highlighted concerns regarding Daszak’s involvement in gain-of-function research and potential conflicts of interest involving federal grants.

However, three days before his arrival in New York, CBP received a request from the FBI’s New York Field Office to halt the stop, and the inspection never happened.

«FBI New York requested we do not stop the subject below,» the request states, according to the documents.

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The records include detailed flight itineraries, proposed interrogation questions, and internal emails documenting the interagency disagreement over the search.

«This isn’t the whole story. It’s the start of one,» Paul wrote in a lengthy thread on X. «The Reading Room will be updated on a rolling basis as the investigation continues.»

At the time of the planned interception, Daszak headed the now-defunct EcoHealth Alliance, an American-based nonprofit that conducted research and outreach on the causes of emerging pandemic diseases, such as those originating in bats.

He was a member of the 10-person WHO team that traveled to China to investigate the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

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Daszak had received public criticism regarding a potential conflict of interest for being included on the WHO investigative team despite his financial and professional ties to WIV.

Daszak now heads Nature Health Global, a non-profit scientific organization focused on ecological research, public health, and pandemic prevention.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the FBI and Nature Health Global.