By CHRISTINE FERNANDO and SOPHIA TAREEN
CHICAGO (AP) — The son of infamous Mexican drug kingpin “El Chapo” intends to plead responsible to drug trafficking expenses within the U.S., in response to courtroom paperwork filed Tuesday.
Prosecutors allege Ovidio Guzman Lopez, alongside together with his brother, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, ran a faction of the cartel often called the “Chapitos,” or little Chapos, that exported fentanyl to the USA.
Ovidio Guzman Lopez’s father is Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the previous chief of the Sinaloa cartel who smuggled mountains of cocaine and different medication into the USA over 25 years.
Ovidio Guzman Lopez was arrested in Mexico in 2023 and extradited to the USA. He was charged in federal courtroom in Chicago with cash laundering, drug and firearm offenses.
He beforehand pleaded not responsible, however on-line courtroom information point out he’s scheduled to seem in courtroom on July 9 to vary his plea as a part of a take care of prosecutors. Court docket paperwork filed Tuesday point out he intends to plead responsible after phrase of a potential deal was disclosed throughout an October listening to.
Ovidio Guzman Lopez can be the primary of the brothers to enter a plea deal.
Joaquin Guzman Lopez can be in U.S. custody. He and one other longtime Sinaloa chief, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, had been arrested in July in Texas after they landed within the U.S. on a personal airplane. Joaquin Guzman Lopez has pleaded not responsible to expenses together with cash laundering, drug dealing and conspiracy to distribute medication. Zambada additionally pleaded not responsible.
The boys’s dramatic seize prompted a surge in violence in Mexico’s northern state of Sinaloa as two factions of the Sinaloa cartel clashed.
Federal prosecutors and Ovidio Guzman Lopez’s lawyer, listed in on-line courtroom information as Jeffrey Lichtman, didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
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