The wife of the notorious drug lord El Chapo was surrounded by body guards as she left the Brooklyn Federal Court after her husband was sentenced to life plus 30 years in New York.
The wife of Mexican drug lord El Chapo was sentenced to three years in federal prison and four years of supervised release for her role in drug and money-laundering.
Emma Coronel Aispuro will plead guilty to federal charges of helping her husband run his drug empire. The former beauty queen has two daughters with a notorious boss.
Coronel, a dual U.S. and Mexican citizen, was arrested in February at Dulles International Airport in Virginia and charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana in the United States.
On January 8, 2016 El Chapo was taken to the maximum security prison in Mexico City.
The Justice Department stated that she laundered the narcotics proceeds and engaged in transactions in the property of her husband, who the Treasury Department had designated as a Significant Foreign Narcotics Trafficker.
Coronel was ordered to give up over 1.5 million dollars.
According to the U.S. attorneys, Coronel played a critical role in helping her husband escape from a Mexican prison.
In July 2015, the boss of the Sinaloa Cartel escaped from a maximum-security prison after slipping through a hole in his shower area.
The house in Almoloya de Juarez, Mexico where El Chapo escaped from the maximum security prison on July 16, 2015, has an entrance tunnel.
A custom-built tunnel was built underneath the prison complex after a gap in the shower floor. The tunnel was 5 feet high and 3 feet wide.
Coronel helped purchase a property near the prison and provided a watch that would allow co-conspirators to dig a tunnel from that property to the cell of the leader of the Mexican Mafia.
A witness who is working with the U.S. government says Coronel helped organize the construction of the escape tunnel.
Mexican authorities lost custody of the drug lord twice.
On July 15, 2015, the authorities in Mexico said that the leader of the drug trade, El Chapo, escaped from the Mexican maximum security prison.
The farmhand escaped from prison for the first time in 2001. He was able to evade capture for 13 years.
After more than six months on the run, he was captured by Mexican authorities.
According to the witness, Coronel gave a Mexican official $2 million to oversee the transfer of the notorious drug lord from one prison to another.
Coronel ordered the transfer to facilitate a new escape. The drug boss was not moved. He was extradited to the US a year later.
Coronel attended the three-month trial in which the narco leader was sentenced to life in prison and ordered to pay $12.6 billion in forfeiture.
