Ovidio Guzmán López, one of four sons of the infamous Mexican crime lord known as El Chapo, plans to plead guilty this summer to sprawling federal drug charges, according to court papers filed on Tuesday.
If the plea goes through as planned on July 9 in Chicago, Mr. Guzmán López would become the first of El Chapo’s sons, who are known collectively as Los Chapitos, to acknowledge guilt in a U.S. federal courthouse.
Jeffrey Lichtman, Mr. Guzmán López’s lawyer, said that his client had not yet reached a final plea deal with the government, but hoped to have one in place in the next few months.
Mr. Guzmán López is perhaps best known for causing a bloody battle between gunmen for the Sinaloa drug cartel and the Mexican military in October 2019 in city of Culiacán, which has long served as the cartel’s urban stronghold.
In a display of brute aggression, cartel operatives humiliated Mexican officials by forcing the government to release Mr. Guzmán López shortly after he was captured.
He was arrested again in Mexico in January 2023 and extradited to the United States that September to face drug charges in federal court in Chicago. He was named in a sprawling indictment along with his full brother, Joaquín Guzmán López; his two half brothers, Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar; and his father’s former business partner, Ismael Zambada García.
In a story that appeared to have been ripped from a narco thriller, Joaquín Guzmán López abducted Mr. Zambada García in Culiacán last summer and flew him over the border into the custody of U.S. federal agents.
Joaquín Guzmán López has also been in negotiations with federal authorities in Chicago to reach his own plea deal.
After El Chapo, whose real name is Joaquín Guzmán Loera, was convicted in a landmark trial in Brooklyn in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison, F.B.I., Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security Department investigators turned their attention to his sons, who inherited portions of their father’s fractured empire.
The case against Mr. Guzmán López in Chicago drew on the work of investigators from that city, Washington and San Diego, incorporating a vast trove of evidence from cooperating witnesses. It took a sweeping look at drug sales and violent crimes reaching back to 2008.
The indictment in Chicago accused Ovidio Guzmán López of acting as a “logistical coordinator” for the cartel, helping to oversee large shipments of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States. The indictment also said that he helped drug proceeds from American consumers be transferred to — and laundered in — Mexico.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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