She knew all, say D.C. feds as judge orders El Chapo wife Emma Coronel jailed awaiting trial charges of helping drug kingpin manage empire, plot prison break
The beauty queen bride of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera was an integral liaison in her husband’s criminal enterprise who helped fulfill some of the Mexican drug kingpin’s most notorious exploits, federal prosecutors charged Tuesday.
Emma Coronel Aispuro, 31, El Chapo’s wife and mother to his 10-year-old daughters, will remain jailed while awaiting trial, a Washington, D.C., federal judge ordered.
Coronel appeared at a virtual court hearing less than 24 hours after federal agents arrested her trying to board a plane at Virginia’s Dulles Airport.
Prosecutors hit Coronel with a litany of drug charges for her ties to the Sinaloa cartel, including conspiring to smuggle cocaine, meth, heroin and pot into the U.S. between 2012 and 2014.
“This defendant worked closely with the command and control structure of the Mexican drug trafficking organization known as the Sinaloa cartel — most notably, with her husband, Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, the leader of the cartel, prior to his extradition and subsequent conviction in the United States,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Nardozzi.
In asking the judge to detain Coronel as her case plays out, Nardozzi cited her central involvement in Guzman’s escape from Altiplano prison in 2015, as well as her efforts to help him evade arrest before his January 2017 extradition to Brooklyn.
“Additionally, Your Honor, the defendant has access to criminal associates who are members of the Sinaloa cartel — as well as financial means to generate a serious risk of flight,” Nardozzi said.
The charges are the first against Coronel, a California-born dual Mexican citizen who’s maintained close proximity to some of the world’s most prolific drug traffickers since birth.
Ines Coronel Barreras, her father, was a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel and was sentenced to 10 years in a Mexican prison in 2017 on marijuana trafficking and firearms charges. Her uncle, Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, was also a top Sinaloa lieutenant who did business with Guzmán. The Mexican Army killed him during a shootout in 2010.
She was no oblivious trophy wife, prosecutors say. Coronel had an intimate understanding of the drug trafficking trade that put her and El Chapo in billionaire status, the feds charge.
“Coronel grew up with knowledge of the narcotics trafficking industry, and married Guzman [El Chapo] when she was a teenager,” states the complaint.
“Coronel understood the drug proceeds she controlled during her marriage to Guzman were derived from these shipments.“
Coronel’s attorneys, Jeffrey Lichtman and Mariel Colon Miro, were both on El Chapo’s defense team at his 2018 trial in Brooklyn. They reserved making a bail application Tuesday, but Lichtman said he plans to ask a judge to release Coronel on bail “within a few weeks.”
“It’s a tragic situation for the kids, obviously, as Emma’s detention was the main issue that was discussed today,” Lichtman told the Daily News.
“They were not with her when she was arrested.”
Coronel wed El Chapo, who’s 32 years her senior, when she was just 18. A permanent fixture at his three-month-long blockbuster trial — the largest of its kind ever held in a U.S. courtroom — she sat through more than 200 hours of testimony.
The couple was not permitted to talk, touch or otherwise communicate with each other during the trial but would mouth words to each other and blow kisses during proceedings. On one trial day, they wore matching outfits.
Coronel listened as Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez, one of her husband’s myriad mistresses, vividly recounted his naked escape from U.S. and Mexican law enforcement through a secret hatch beneath a bathtub that led to the sewer system of the city of Culiacan.
And she was also in court when turncoat witnesses implicated her in several of Chapo’s most dramatic feats.
Notably, his former right-hand man, Damaso Lopez Nuñez, told jurors how Coronel helped plot Chapo’s underground escape from Altiplano, a maximum-security lockup 55 miles west of Mexico City.
To carry out the astounding jailbreak, Chapo gave his wife detailed instructions over a period of months each time she visited him in prison. Coronel communicated the directives to the druglord’s adult sons and his lieutenants, Lopez Nuñez testified in January 2019.
“Emma gave us the message,” he said.
Acting on the orders, the drug baron’s sons bought property surrounding the prison and hired tunnel architects to find Chapo’s cell using GPS. They then dug a tunnel nearly a mile long from the shower in his cell to freedom.
El Chapo rode through the tunnel on the back of a motorbike-on-rails driven by Coronel’s brother, and was then helicoptered to a mountain hideout.
El Chapo was convicted of more than a dozen felony charges on Feb. 12, 2019, including money laundering, conspiracy, firearms and international drug trafficking. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years and ordered to forfeit $12.6 billion.
The fallen cartel boss was flown out to ADX Florence in Colorado on the night of his sentencing in July 2019.
If convicted, Coronel faces a possible life sentence and up to $10 million in fines.
