![]() ![]() His other son, Ismael "Mayito" Zambada Jr. On 18 March 2009, his son Vicente Zambada Niebla was arrested by the Mexican Army. His wife and sons, Serafín Zambada-Ortiz (alias "el Sera", as of 2018 arrested and released), and Ismael Zambada-Imperial (alias "el Mayito gordo", convicted), as well as his four daughters, María Teresa, Midiam Patricia, Mónica del Rosario, and Modesta, have played an active role in narcotics' distribution and money laundering. Zambada is married to Rosario Niebla Cardoza. However, the effort to recruit the brothers faltered as Zambada's health declined and when after that Zambada gave El Chapo's sons more influence in the organization, who were less willing to grant them leadership. On 24 June 2020, it was revealed that Zambada had been willing to give former top Mexican drug lords Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Caro Quintero high ranking positions in the Sinaloa Cartel if they agreed to join. In 2019 his son, Vicente Zambada Niebla, testified against Joaquín Guzman Loera and recounted the shipment of tons of drugs by his father, and "that his father’s bribery budget was often as much as $1 million per month, with bribes going to many high-level Mexican public officials". Since 2016, Zambada is thought to have assumed full command of the Sinaloa Cartel and to be Mexico's most enduring and powerful drug lord. Until 2016, Zambada headed the Sinaloa Cartel in partnership with Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, when El Chapo was captured. In 2011, it was thought Zambada may have had plastic surgery and disguised himself to move throughout Mexico. In 2007, Zambada was featured on America's Most Wanted, and the FBI has been offering up to US$5 million for information leading to his capture. ![]() Ismael Zambada's wanted poster in the 2000s Zambada has been operating primarily in the States of Sinaloa and Durango, with influence along a large portion of Mexico's Pacific coast, as well as in Cancun, Quintana Roo, Sonora, and Nuevo Leon. ![]() Members of the cartel smuggle the cocaine to distribution cells in Arizona, Atlanta, California, Illinois, and New York. It uses a variety of methods, including airplanes, trucks, cars, boats, and tunnels to transport the cocaine to the United States. Zambada's organization, the Sinaloa Cartel, receives multi-ton quantities of cocaine, mostly by sea from Colombian sources. Taking advantage of the pressure being placed on the Tijuana Cartel, other drug bosses, most notably Ismael Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán, began to encroach on strongholds in northwestern Mexico, leading to full-scale war. ![]() The Tijuana Cartel, the largest and most sophisticated of the Mexican cartels at the time, received the brunt of the blows. In 2006, the administration of President Felipe Calderón launched an offensive against Mexico's drug trafficking networks. Since 1998, Zambada has been wanted by Mexico's attorney general's office, when it issued bounties totaling $2.8 million USD on him and five other leaders of the Juárez Cartel. The Sinaloa Cartel drug lords were active in the states of Sinaloa, Durango, Chihuahua, Sonora, Nuevo León, and Nayarit. In 1989, when Mexican drug lord Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo was arrested, his organization split into two opposing factions: the Tijuana Cartel whose leadership was inherited by his nephews and heirs, the Arellano Félix brothers and the Sinaloa Cartel whose leadership fell to former lieutenants Héctor Luis Palma Salazar, Ismael Zambada García and Joaquín Guzmán Loera ( El Chapo). Zambada has historically worked closely with the Juárez Cartel and the Carrillo Fuentes family, while maintaining independent ties to Colombian cocaine suppliers. As of early 2023, he has never been arrested or incarcerated and is the single last remaining fugitive of the List of Mexico's 37 most-wanted drug lords (2009). Before he assumed leadership of the entire cartel, he allegedly served as the logistical coordinator for its Guzmán-Zambada organization, which has overseen the trafficking of cocaine and heroin into Chicago and other US cities by aircraft, narcosubs, container ships, go-fast boats, fishing vessels, buses, rail cars, tractor trailers, and automobiles. Ismael Mario Zambada García (born 1 January 1948) is a Mexican drug lord, co-founder and current top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, an international crime syndicate based in Sinaloa. Joaquín Guzmán Loera and Héctor Luis Palma Salazar ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |