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Case file s1361 · Money and markets · 2019
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2019
El Chapo: Booking photo of Joaquin “El Chapo“ Guzman (front)
El Chapo. DEA. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
living; sentenced 17 July 2019
Place
Brooklyn, New York, USA; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico
Field
drug trafficking fortune · Crime on the timeline
Legal tradition
US federal criminal forfeiture; continuing criminal enterprise statute · Common law
Historical event
the Sinaloa cartel's war and its succession after El Chapo's extradition
Religion
El Chapo: Catholic (recorded as Catholicism on Wikidata)
Member of
Sinaloa Cartel, Guadalajara Cartel (Wikidata)
Money and marketsMurder and sudden deathSeized by the stateNowNorth AmericaLatin AmericaMexico

El Chapo was ordered to forfeit $12.6 billion, and two of the sons who inherited his cartel faction pleaded guilty in Chicago

Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán led the Sinaloa cartel. He was extradited to the United States in 2017. After a 12-week trial in Brooklyn with 56 witnesses, he was convicted of murder conspiracy, money laundering, firearms charges and moving more than 200 tons of cocaine into the United States. Testimony described a private zoo, anti-ageing treatments in Switzerland and a $10 million beach house. On 17 July 2019 Judge Brian Cogan sentenced him to life plus 30 years and ordered him to forfeit $12.6 billion. He is serving life in a maximum-security prison in Colorado. US prosecutors accuse four of his sons, known as Los Chapitos, of running a faction of the cartel they inherited from their father. Ovidio Guzmán López pleaded guilty in federal court in Chicago in July 2025 to four counts and agreed to pay $80 million. On 1 December 2025 his brother Joaquín Guzmán López pleaded guilty before Judge Sharon Coleman to drug trafficking and continuing criminal enterprise charges, and to kidnapping a man believed to be cartel leader Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada. Reports said his deal requires cooperation and an $80 million payment. Two other brothers remain at large. Status: El Chapo convicted, serving life; Ovidio pleaded guilty, sentencing hearing moved from 7 December 2026 to 14 April 2027 in the Northern District of Illinois; Joaquín pleaded guilty, awaiting sentencing.

What the law took from it

A forfeiture order that large is a measure of the crime, not of money the state can find.

Sources
  1. api-prod.gothamist.comPress
  2. Al JazeeraPress
  3. politica.expansion.mxPress

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “El Chapo was ordered to forfeit $12.6 billion, and two of the sons who inherited his cartel faction pleaded guilty in Chicago,” story s1361, https://www.celebrity.estate/el-chapo-2019, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Money and marketsMurder and sudden deathSeized by the stateNowNorth AmericaLatin AmericaCommon lawMexico