For decades, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada was Mexico’s most elusive kingpin, perpetually slipping through the fingers of authorities who pursued him across his home state of Sinaloa.

One former U.S. law enforcement official recalled that while other drug lords were escorted by convoys of heavily armed gunmen, Zambada kept a low profile and made daring getaways without firing a single bullet.

“He walked right out from under me on two occasions with no security at all,” said the former official, who requested anonymity to discuss operations in Mexico. “Once he was holding hands with a girl and once he traded hats with a field worker and walked right through us wearing a poncho and field hand’s sombrero.”

Less of a household name than his longtime partner, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Zambada preferred to rule from the shadows, a seemingly untouchable godfather who ordered deaths of rivals and lined the pockets of police chiefs, military generals and politicians at the highest levels of his country’s government.

And then, in the span of just a few hours on July 25, 2024, his empire came crashing down.

A photo of federal agents arresting cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada on July 25, 2024, is displayed at the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa, NM.

Betrayed by one of El Chapo’s sons, Zambada was lured into an ambush, kidnapped and forced onto a plane bound for a small airport outside of El Paso, where U.S. federal agents waited to receive them.

In the two years since, questions have lingered about the extent of U.S. involvement in the stunning capture. Although officials have maintained publicly that El Chapo’s son acted on his own and surprised everyone by bringing along Zambada, sources have revealed to The Times new details about talks that preceded the downfall of the Sinaloa cartel co-founder.

On Monday, Zambada was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge.

Once a near-mythical figure, seen only in a handful of long-outdated photos, Zambada, 76, hobbled into a packed courtroom. His hair, previously dyed jet black, had gone entirely silver and his thick mustache had been replaced by a scruffy beard.

As he sunk into his chair, he could be heard muttering the expletive, “Ay, cabrón,” suggesting he had difficulty in sitting and standing up.

In this courtroom sketch Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, center, is escorted by U.S. Marshals out of federal court after his sentencing in Brooklyn.

(Elizabeth Williams/Associated Press)

“I grew up in an environment where violence and crime seemed normal, but now I know that’s no excuse,” Zambada said, addressing the court. “There comes a time when every person must take responsibility for their decisions. I didn’t, and many people paid the price.”

Several top U.S. government officials celebrated Zambada’s life sentence at a news conference after the hearing, though they stopped short of taking credit for his capture and echoed past comments that Joaquín Guzmán López orchestrated the kidnapping on his own.

“The United States made perfectly clear that we do not condone kidnapping, and that he would receive no credit for anything that he did along those lines,” said Joseph Nocella, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico at the time of Zambada’s capture, Ken Salazar, said that U.S. authorities were not involved, a stance he repeated in his forthcoming memoir, writing that he had told Mexico’s president “the United States had no prior knowledge of this abduction.”

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1. Flight instrumentation is installed in the cockpit of a Beechcraft King Air aircraft. 2. Mexican snacks are displayed inside of a Beechcraft King Air aircraft.

The FBI seemed to undercut that position in recent weeks when it put the small jet that carried Zambada and El Chapo’s son on display at a museum attached to the small New Mexico airport where they landed. A sign displayed with the plane, a Beechcraft King Air, said the arrests were the result of “Operation Air Kings,” in which FBI officials “successfully executed a highly complex, secretive, and daring arrest of two of the world’s most wanted fugitives.”

Sources familiar with the operation but not authorized to speak publicly said U.S. federal agents had been in contact with Guzmán López, and were pressuring him to surrender. During the negotiations, the sources said, U.S. authorities suggested Guzmán López could secure a better deal for himself by bringing along key evidence or other cartel members when turning himself in, although no specifics were discussed.

“There was a very significant effort to walk right up to the line of not directing any activity but making it clear what kinds of things would be looked upon with favor,” one of the sources said.

Leading up to his arrest, the sources said, Guzmán López notified U.S. agents that he would be arriving imminently and suggested they would be pleased with his bargaining chip. One source said they expected another one of El Chapo’s sons — known as Los Chapitos — to perhaps be part of the surrender.

Ricardo Martinez, 75, of Horizon City, Texas, looks at the museum exhibit of the plane used to capture Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

“Joaquin basically said, ‘Hey I’m coming in soon, I’m going to bring you something big,’” the source said. “They knew he meant he was bringing someone.”

They never expected him to bring Zambada, the sources said.

Under Zambada’s direction, U.S. prosecutors said in a sentencing memo, the cartel “spent millions of dollars a year” to pay Mexican authorities who protected him from arrest and prosecution. They said he also employed small army of sicarios, foot-soldiers who tortured and murdered rivals at his command.

Zambada’s attorney has sought to paint a more complex portrait of his client, describing him in a sentencing memo as a product of circumstance from a difficult upbringing.

Frank Perez, attorney for Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, leaves the federal courthouse in the Brooklyn.

(Richard Drew / Associated Press)

The second of seven children in a family of subsistence farmers in rural Sinaloa, Zambada stopped attending school after the sixth grade, the defense memo said. When Zambada was 12, his father died of brain cancer. As the eldest son, Zambada took over running the family farm and became responsible for providing for his siblings.

He worked other jobs, including delivering meat for his uncle who ran a butcher shop, before turning to the drug trade at age 19. An older friend “took him up to the mountains about an hour from their village where each planted marijuana, camouflaging it within rows of corn on the same parcel,” according to the defense memo.

His first harvest of 60 pounds barely earned him $400, the memo said, but he developed contacts in the marijuana and opium trade and, “gradually, over the course of many years, he rose to become one of the dominant figures in drug trafficking.” He formed the Sinaloa cartel with El Chapo and a handful of other powerful allies from their home state, periodically warring with rival groups to maintain control of key smuggling routes.

A photo of federal agents arresting Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

(Paul Ratje/For The Times)

His daughter, Teresa Zambada, told U.S. authorities her father did not “aspire to become what he became to that magnitude,” according to the memo.

The defense memo described Zambada as a patriarch — the father of 16 children from multiple women — and a peacemaker who “was known to first seek out other solutions” before resorting to violence.

The former U.S. official involved in the hunt for Zambada in Mexico said there was some truth to the suggestion that he was less prone to violence than other cartel bosses, including El Chapo — but only to a degree.

“He was less volatile but no less deadly — more surgical but equally brutal,” the official said.

A wanted poster advertising a $15-million reward for information about cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada is displayed inside the aircraft that was used to capture him.

Several of Zambada’s close relatives were early pioneers in the practice of cooperating with U.S. authorities to reduce their prison terms after being captured, a self-preservation move that has become increasingly common among high-ranking Mexican cartel figures

His brother and three sons all pleaded guilty and struck deals after being apprehended. Zambada himself was once in talks to surrender to the U.S., sources told The Times, but he opted to remain a fugitive.

The family history has fueled speculation that Zambada would cut a deal following his arrest and spill secrets about corruption. His attorney, Frank Perez, has denied any such arrangement, a position he reiterated again during Monday’s court proceeding.

Perez’s only request to the court was that Zambada be spared the fate of El Chapo, who is serving out his life sentence under strict isolation at a federal supermax prison in Colorado. Citing “a complex of age-related health issues,” Perez asked for Zambada to be sent to a prison medical center.

Judge Brian Cogan, who also presided over the case of El Chapo, said Monday he would recommend that the Bureau of Prisons take Zambada’s deteriorating health into consideration when deciding where he should serve his time. Cogan also said Zamabda deserved credit for sparing the government the difficulty and cost of going to trial.

Prior to the sentencing, prosecutors objected to sending Zambada to a lower-security prison, warning that he could continue to direct his faction of the Sinaloa cartel from behind bars.

One of Zambada’s sons, known as Mayito Flaco, has taken over leadership of the group, which remains locked in a bloody war with Los Chapitos.

For U.S. law enforcement officials who spent much of their careers trying to bring Zambada to justice, the sentencing Monday offered some long-awaited closure.

U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar gives a news conference at his residence in Mexico City on Oct. 17, 2022.

(Marco Ugarte / Associated Press)

Michael Ferrara, a former federal prosecutor in Chicago involved in the case against Zambada’s eldest son, called the capture and life sentence “a massive win.” But Ferrara cautioned against celebrating it as a definitive victory. The Sinaloa cartel continues to exist, he said, only with a younger, more ruthless generation calling the shots.

“For the narco juniors, they’ve never lived in a real world, they’ve lived in a world where their fathers are in complete control,” he said. “For them it’s logical, they just employ death and destruction. They don’t know any other way to hold onto power.”

Addressing the court during his sentencing, Zambada issued a plea for peace.

“Too many lives are lost, too many families are destroyed, and too many young people are trapped in a cycle that leads only to prison or death. No one wins in a war like this,” he said. “To the next generation, I say: choose a different path. There is no honor in violence, nor anything lasting in crime. It brings only pain and loss.”

Special correspondent Darren Foster contributed reporting from Brooklyn.