El Chapo’s Wife Pleads Guilty To Helping Run The Sinaloa Drug Cartel

Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Mexico’s most infamous drug kingpin, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, pleaded guilty Thursday to helping him run the powerful and violent Sinaloa cartel and aiding her husband in his dramatic escape from a Mexican prison.

The former beauty queen was captured and arrested by U.S. officials as she arrived at Dulles International Airport in Virginia back in February. Coronel faces charges of participating in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and marijuana for importation into the United States.

The Justice Department Investigators also allege that Coronel played a key role in her husband’s 2015 prison break when he got out of Altiplano prison via a secret, underground tunnel connecting a hole under his prison cell shower to a nearby warehouse stocked with weapons and armored cars.

According to court documents, Colonel also tried to organize a second escape for her imprisoned kingpin husband a year later, serving a life sentence at Supermax prison in Colorado.