Emma Coronel: El Chapo's beauty queen wife gets 3 years in jail for role in drug ring
After pleading guilty to drug charges, El Chapo's wife Emma Coronel Aispuro was sentenced to three years in prison. Coronel agreed to surrender roughly $1.5 million as part of her sentence. Coronel addressed the court on November 30 pleading with the judge for forgiveness and stating that she does not want her girls to grow up without either of their parents.
"My daughters are the most important motive for which I accept my mistakes and I ask for forgiveness for them," said the drug lord's wife in her native Spanish language. "I don't want my daughters to grow up without their mother," Coronel pleaded before the judge during her trial.
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"I hope you raise your twins in a different environment than you’ve experienced to date. Good luck," Judge Rudolph Conteras responded to her in his concluding comments. Coronel was also given a four-year supervised release sentence. Her sentence of three years was one year less than the prosecution had requested from Judge Contreras.
In June 2021, Coronel, 32, pled guilty to three counts of conspiracy to distribute illegal substances. The narco queen admitted to knowingly and deliberately conspiring for at least six years to distribute heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamine.
She also admitted to one count of money laundering and one count of conducting business with a foreign narcotics trafficker. She also acknowledged to conspiring to aid her husband's 2015 escape from a Mexican prison as part of her plea deal. Prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi informed Judge Contreras before filing her plea that if the case went to trial, "the government will show each of the three counts in the information by a number of techniques."
"Those would include witness testimony, evidence generated by law enforcement investigation, and other means," he concluded. With her face hidden behind a white mask, the former beauty queen is said to have remained emotionless throughout the hearing. Coronel assured the judge that she was aware of the allegations and the consequences of her guilty plea. She told the judge in Spanish, "Everything is clear," before her interpreter translated the message in English.
Following a two-year investigation, Coronel was apprehended in February 2021 at Dulles International Airport in Virginia. Investigators believe she assisted her husband, Joaquin Guzman, in relaying instructions about his drug trafficking operations to Sinaloa cartel smugglers from 2012 until early 2014. After El Chapo's arrest in February 2014, she allegedly continued to convey messages while visiting him in a Mexican prison. According to court documents, Coronel, who was born in the United States, and members of her family were heavily involved in the cartel's drug trafficking operations.