CARTEL QUEEN FLIGHT RISK
El Chapo’s wife Emma Coronel Aispuro held in jail without bond & faces life for ‘plotting prison escapes’
THE wife of ‘El Chapo’ has been held in jail without bond and is facing life for allegedly plotting her husband’s escapes and helping him run his drug empire.
Former beauty queen , 31, was branded a “flight risk” in today’s court hearing because of her links to Sinaloa Cartel criminals.
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Aispuro, who has two daughters with notorious Mexico drug lord Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, has been accused of conspiring to distribute cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana in the US.
She was also charged with working alongside Guzman’s sons and a witness to build an underground tunnel that the kingpin used to escape from the Altiplano prison to prevent his extradition to the US.
As part of the plot, a piece of land near the prison was bought and a GPS watch was smuggled to Guzman so his accomplices could pinpoint his location.
Aispuro’s arrest at Dulles International Airport in Virginia on Monday is the latest twist in the bloody saga involving Guzman, the longtime head of the Sinaloa drug cartel.
The glamorous cartel queen appeared by video conference for her initial court appearance before a federal magistrate judge in Washington, D.C.
Judge Robin Meriweather concluded the Tuesday hearing by ordering Aispuro to be "held without bond pending trial, recognizing the defense maintains its right to reopen pretrial detention in the future."
At the start of the hearing, the case was explained as "a turn on an arrest warrant and an initial appearance."
Representing the government was El Chapo trial veteran, Prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi.
And representing Aispuro was defense attorney Jeff Lichtman.
The hearing started off slow as Aispuro was without a phone at the Alexandria jail and breaks were frequently taken to translate Spanish.
Prior to the start of the hearing, prosecutors said they would not be seeking a detention hearing.
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Aispuro's attorney confirmed they would agree to a temporary order of detention.
Aispuro, who will be held on a temporary order for the time being, will face a minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison, if she is found guilty.
The former beauty queen may also be fined up to $10million.
Prosecutors requested "pretrial detention" to have Aispuro remain in jail until her trial because "defendant worked closely with the command and control structure of the drug trafficking organization known as the Sinaloa cartel - most notably with her husband."
Another reason for keeping her in jail was that she as "financial means to generate a serious risk of flight."
Following the hearing, Aispuro was returned to custody of US Marshals and will temporarily stay in an Alexandria, Virginia, jail.
Technical difficulties plagued the hearing's translator and conference call lines since the start of the hearing.
At one point Lichtman said a fire alarm of some sort was going off in the background, but he said he was fine and was able to proceed.
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According to court documents, Aispuro, an alleged "narco princess," faces charges of participating in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana for importation into the US.
In addition, Aispuro is charged with allegedly conspiring with others to help Mexican drug kingpin Guzman Loera escape from Altiplano prison in Almoloya de Juarez in July 2015.
Guzman Loera was captured in 2014.
The sophisticated plot entailed digging a tunnel into his jail cell shower stretching a mile.
Aispuro relayed messages for her husband and aided him in shipping drugs from 2012 to 2014 and dodging arrest by American and Mexican authorities, according to court documents obtained by .
'NARCO PRINCESS'
Guzman Loera was arrested in January 2016 in and Aispuro allegedly took part in plotting another prison break with other individuals.
El Chapo, the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, was extradited to the US in January 2017.
A jury in the Eastern District of New York convicted him in 2019 for leading the cartel and the massive drug conspiracy and he was sentenced to life in prison.
He faced 10 charges, including leading a criminal enterprise and the importation and sales of large amounts of narcotics into the United States.
El Chapo has been accused of earning $14 billion during his career by smuggling up to 200 tons of drugs across the US border with boats, yachts, airplanes, submarines, trains, tractors filled with food and a hidden tunnel.
In 2016 and 2017 - the years when Guzman was arrested for a final time - Mexican heroin production increased by 37 percent and fentanyl seizures at the southwest border more than doubled, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
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Now, the US government's case is helped by an informant - named as 'Cooperating Witness 1' - who testified that they were given $100,000 by Coronel to help Guzman's escape from prison when he was recaptured in 2016 - and $1 million in total.
The informant claims Coronel met with him/her and asked for assistance with the jailbreak plot.
Court documents say: "Cooperating Witness 1 told me Coronel agreed to help facilitate Guzman to escape from Altiplano via an underground tunnel."
The witness also claims that Aispuro oversaw a $2 million plan to bribe Mexico's head of prisons to send Guzman from a prison in Ciudad Juarez back to Altiplano - where he would once again be busted out of jail.
Mike Vigil, a former DEA agent who worked undercover in Mexico, told the Daily Mail: "She was not a distributor, or a money launderer, or involved in logistics. But she did things he ordered her to, like passing messages."
Aispuro's drug charges include one count criminal complaint with conspiracy to distribute one kilogram of heroin or more, five kilograms of cocaine or more, 1,000 kilograms of marijuana or more and 500 grams or more of methamphetamines for illegal importation into the US.
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A criminal complaint is no more than an allegation.
Guzman's lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, is representing Coronel.
'LIFE OF CRIME'
Aispuro is a former beauty queen who was born in California on July 3, 1989.
She married Guzman Loera in 2007, apparently on her 18th birthday.
Aispuro is the daughter of a cattle rancher, Inés Coronel Barreras, and Blanca Estela Aispuro Aispuro.
Guzman Loera apparently fell in love with Aispuro after seeing her at a beauty pageant in Durango, Mexico, in 2007.
El Chapo reportedly influenced the Coffee and Guava Festival in which she was competing and made sure she won.
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But why would a rancher's daughter run into the arms of a drug lord?
According to reports, Aispuro's relatives are far from innocent.
Her dad is said to have grown marijuana and opium poppies while her uncle was drug kingpin Igancio "Nacho" Coronel - one of El Chapo's most trusted men.
Both her dad Ines Coronel Barreras and brother Omar are mid-ranking gangsters inside the cartel, reports say.
FAMILY AFFAIR
The FBI intercepted phone calls with Ines discussing business dealings with El Chapo in 2011.
In the calls, Aispuro's father is said to have called his criminal lord son-in-law "senor".
Aispuro told the Los Angeles Times: "I would say what won me over was his way of talking, how he treated me, the way we began to get along - first as friends and from that came everything else.
"He tends to win over people by his manner of being, of acting, the way he treats people in general," she added.
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As Guzman Loera awaited his trial in 2018, Aispuro showed her luxurious life in online snaps.
In the photographs, she wore skimpy outfits, tight jeans, stilettos and Prada purses.
During her husband's trial, Aispuro appeared to revel in the spotlight wearing eye-catching outfits and blowing kisses at her spouse.
She sat through hours two months of testimony including listening to hours of evidence given by her husband's former mistresses and others who turned against him.
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Following the trial, Aispuro launched her own fashion line in a reported attempt to capitalise on the high profile trial.
And later in 2019, she appeared in VH1 realty show Cartel Crew where she filmed a scene with the son of a Columbian drug lord on a yacht.
Federal authorities were investigating Aispuro for at least two years on being an accomplice to her husband.
Aispuro's case is being probed by the FBI’s Washington Field Office.
The prosecutors are Acting Deputy Chief Anthony Nardozzi and Trial Attorney Kate Wagner from the Justice Department’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section.
Mike Vigil, a former DEA agent, told the that Emma was "a narco princess" deeply involved in her husband's criminal empire.
Vigil, who worked undercover in crime-ridden Mexico, says police will try and "flip" Emma to give testify against high-ranking members of the cartel.
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The former cop believes Emma won't want to be separated from her two twin daughters - who she had with El Chapo.
He said: ";They have cooperating witnesses who claim that she was liaising with the sons.
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"And they know that she is very devoted to her daughters, so she won't want to be separated from them.
"They'll be really pressuring her to flip."
Emma Coronel Aispuro American-born former teenage beauty queen and the wife of Joaquín -El Chapo- Guzmán shows off her barbie themed party
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