Ovidio Guzmán López, one of the four sons of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, alias “El Chapo”, was extradited to the United States on Friday. He is due to stand trial in a Chicago court on an extensive series of federal drug charges.
Culiacan
Prosecutors call Ovidio the criminal organization’s “logistics coordinator,” who helped oversee large shipments of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States. The indictment also alleges that he helped divert drug proceeds from U.S. consumers and launder them in Mexico.
Guzmán López had been arrested nine months ago in Culiacán. That city is the capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa, long home to the Sinaloa drug cartel. His father was the leader of that criminal organization and was born in Sinaloa.
Ceasefire
Almost four years ago, Guzmán López was arrested for the first time in Mexico. This turned out disastrously because after the arrest, armed criminals occupied the center of the city of Culiacán and a massacre threatened to begin. The authorities eventually let “Ovidio” go after he telephoned the leader of the criminals to order a ceasefire.
Chapitos
El Chapo was sentenced to life in prison in Brooklyn, New York in 2019. His four sons took over some of the criminal organization’s business. In general, Ovidio is seen as the least smart of the four.
He and Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar and Joaquín Guzmán López, also known as “Los Chapitos”, are now all fugitives and targets of major US criminal investigations, in Washington, Chicago and New York.
The indictment against Ovidio Guzmán López runs forty pages, and deals with drug trafficking and violent acts that sometimes date back to 2008.
Fentanyl
In addition to the charges in Chicago, a second investigation against Ovidio Guzmán is underway. In April, the Public Prosecution Service in New York submitted an extensive criminal file to the court about the smuggling of fentanyl, which is a very valuable raw material for the production of crystal meth.
In addition to Los Chapitos, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the criminal organization Sinaloa Cartel is now led by Ismael Zambada García (75). His partner Dámaso López Núñez was arrested in 2017 and was a witness in the case against El Chapo during his trial in Brooklyn.
