El Chapo’s wife, has been sentenced to three years in prison.

The wife of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the Mexican drug lord, was sentenced to three years in prison and four years of supervised release.

 

According to court documents, Emma Coronel Aispuro pleaded guilty earlier this year to assisting her husband’s cartel, the Sinaloa cartel, in its drug distribution process while her husband was incarcerated.

 

Prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi stated, “The defendant’s actual role was a minimal one.”

“The defendant’s actions were primarily motivated by her desire to help her husband. The defendant carried out his orders, which benefited the criminal cartel’s interests. The defendant was not a manager, organizer, leader, or boss in any way. Rather, she was a cog in a large criminal organization’s wheel.”

 

Coronel, a 32-year-old former beauty queen, avoided a minimum 10-year sentence for her crimes because she has no prior criminal convictions.

The three-year sentence is one year less than the federal government’s recommendation of four years, which the defense referred to as “inappropriate” during the sentencing hearing on Tuesday.

 

Judge Rudolph Contreras of the D.C. District Court noted that the conditions of the prison where Coronel was held prior to her sentencing during the COVID-19 pandemic were “harsher than they would have been” in pre-pandemic times “and will continue to be harsh for the foreseeable future.”

 

Coronel, who holds dual citizenship in the United States and Mexico, married Guzman in 2007, when she was 18 years old. The couple has two daughters who are twins.

 

She admitted to three counts of conspiring to distribute illegally imported cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana; conspiring to launder drug money from the cartel; and engaging in financial dealings with the cartel.

Coronel will be under supervision for four years on count one and three years on counts two and three after her release.

 

During Guzman’s 25-year reign as drug kingpin, the Sinaloa cartel, one of the world’s largest drug-trafficking organizations, was responsible for multiple murders and smuggling mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States, according to prosecutors.

 

 

Guzman was found guilty of running an industrial-scale smuggling operation in New York on Feb. 12, 2019. In July of that year, he was sentenced to life in prison.