The U.S. government secured agreements from Ovidio Guzmán López and Joaquín Guzmán López—sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán—to plead guilty and cooperate with U.S. authorities. This move is part of a legal strategy aimed at strengthening ongoing cases against members of the Sinaloa Cartel and other criminal organizations.
The agreements, signed separately before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, require both men to provide information, testify, and cooperate with the Department of Justice when requested. In exchange, prosecutors may seek a reduction in the sentences they face for drug trafficking and organized crime offenses.
Court documents indicate that Ovidio Guzmán formalized his plea agreement on July 11, 2025, while Joaquín Guzmán López did the same months later, on December 1 of that year. Both men—along with their father, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada—are named in federal case file 1:09-cr-00383, one of the most significant legal proceedings against the Sinaloa Cartel in the United States.
According to case documents, the Department of Justice’s strategy involved filing charges that carried extremely severe penalties, including a mandatory life sentence for the offense of continuing criminal enterprise—a charge associated with organized crime.
Faced with this scenario, prosecutors offered both defendants the possibility of seeking a sentence reduction, but only if they agreed to plead guilty and provide cooperation deemed “complete and truthful” by U.S. authorities.
