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Powerful cartel leader was duped by El Chapo’s son into flying to U.S., sources say
A leader and co-founder of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel is in U.S. custody thanks to a stunning betrayal by one of the sons of imprisoned Mexican kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, a source told CBS News.
The arrest of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada ended more than four decades of his leadership of the deadly criminal organization he founded with Guzmán Loera, who is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 of charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.
One of El Chapo’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López, 38, allegedly duped Zambada into boarding a plane on Thursday, telling him they were going to look at property in Mexico, a person familiar with the investigation confirmed to CBS News. Instead, the plane landed near El Paso, Texas, where Zambada, 76, was arrested by U.S. law enforcement agents from the FBI and HSI.
Both men were taken into custody on the tarmac. The flight and subsequent landing happened “very quickly and very quietly” with no incident once the men exited the plane, a senior law enforcement official confirmed to CBS News.
Joaquín Guzmán López, who is known for running cartel finances while keeping a low profile, cut a deal on behalf of him and his brother Ovidio, a senior law enforcement official confirmed to CBS News. Three sons of Guzmán Loera —including Ovidio Guzmán López— were charged last year with orchestrating a transnational fentanyl trafficking operation into the United States. Ovidio was extradited to the U.S. in 2023, months after U.S. prosecutors unsealed sprawling indictments against him and his brothers, known collectively as the “Chapitos.”
The Sinaloa Cartel runs “the largest, most violent and most prolific fentanyl trafficking operation in the world,” according to U.S. officials.
El Chapo is said to have 12 children, but the Chapitos ran an extremely violent offshoot of the cartel known for its brutal torture of rivals. Some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers,” according to a federal indictment.
Ovidio Guzmán López, known as “the Mouse,” was captured by Mexican security forces in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state, in January 2023 in a violent sting that killed 30 people.
Bureau of Prisons inmate records show Guzmán López was apparently removed from his detention center three days ago, but U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar confirmed in a statement that Ovidio remained in U.S. custody.
The joint DHS-FBI operation to capture Zambada had been in the works for months; him and Joaquín Guzmán López were taken into custody by some of the same agents working on Ovidio Guzmán López’s case, a senior law enforcement official confirmed to CBS News.
A senior law enforcement official described the arrests to CBS News as a “let’s see if this works” kind of operation that sprung into motion in recent days, though planning had been going on for far longer.
Zambada and “El Chapo” partnered in the late 1980s to super charge their cocaine and marijuana smuggling operations. After “El Chapo” was captured in 2016, Zambada became the most senior leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and became known for his extraordinary ability to avoid capture.
—Nicole Sganga and Pat Milton contributed reporting.
CBS News
FEMA administrator: “I don’t know that anybody could be fully prepared for the amount of flooding” from Helene in North Carolina
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said on Sunday that the “historic flooding” in North Carolina from the remnants of Hurricane Helene has gone beyond what anyone could have planned for in the area.
“I don’t know that anybody could be fully prepared for the amount of flooding and landslides that they are experiencing right now,” Criswell said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
Helene made landfall in Florida as a powerful Category 4 storm late Thursday, before sweeping through states in the southeast. Criswell called the storm “a true multi-state event,” adding that her team on the ground has seen “significant impacts in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.”
Asheville, North Carolina, was particularly hard hit as rising floodwaters damaged roads, led to power outages and cut off cellphone service.
For North Carolina in particular, Criswell said the agency has had teams in the area for several days and is sending more search and rescue teams. She said water remains a “big concern,” and the Army Corps of Engineers is working to see what can be done to get water systems back online. And she noted that the agency is also working to bring in satellite communications.
“We’re hearing significant infrastructure damage to water systems, communication, roads, critical transportation routes, as well as several homes that have been just destroyed by this,” Criswell said. “So this is going to be a really complicated recovery in each of these five states that have had these impacts.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has received reports of multiple fatalities across five states, Criswell said. She encouraged people in the affected areas who are looking for someone to call 211 and register the information.
Criswell said in Florida, there was up to 15 feet of storm surge in Taylor County, where she traveled to at the direction of President Biden, adding that there are record storm surges across the Big Bend area. She said in North Carolina, “we’re still in active search and rescue mode,” with ongoing flooding issues and landslides. The administrator will travel to Georgia and North Carolina to assess the impact of the hurricane in the coming days.
In terms of resources for the affected states, Criswell said “we absolutely have enough resources from across the federal family” and can draw from other federal agencies to support the response and recovery.
“We will continue to bring those resources in to help them,” Criswell said. “We want to work with them to rebuild in a way that’s going to help make them more resilient and reduce the impacts from the increased number of storms that they’re experiencing.”
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The high stakes & low blows of vice presidential debates
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Nature: Sunflowers in South Dakota
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