El Chapo’s Wife Arrested in Virginia on Charges of Drug Trafficking, Busting Crime Lord From Prison

Recent investigations have revealed that the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel has begun shifting towards trafficking in fentanyl, in response to rising demand in the US. The drug is 50-to-100 times more potent than morphine.

Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, was arrested in Virginia on Monday on drug-trafficking charges, the US Department of Justice announced.

According to the release, the 31-year-old former-teenage model and dual US-Mexican citizen was arrested at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, DC. 

She is accused of “participating in a conspiracy” to distribute a variety of drugs in the US, including cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana, as well as having helped El Chapo escape from Mexico’s Altiplano prison in 2015 and with having planned a second prison bust after he was re-arrested in 2016, according to the complaint affidavit.

Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Joaquin Guzman, the Mexican drug lord known as "El Chapo", exits the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse during the trial in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., February 5, 2019.

© REUTERS / JEENAH MOON

El Chapo was extradited to the US in 2017, where he was convicted on a number of criminal charges relating to his leadership of the violent drug-running cartel, and is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.