El Chapo’s wife, Emma Coronel, is free after serving time in prison for drug-related charges, whilst her husband is spending his life behind bars in Colorado.
Emma Coronel, the wife of well-renowned Mexican drug lord and Sinaloa Cartel leader, Joaquin ‘El Chapo‘ Guzman, was released from prison in the United States on Wednesday.
The American-born former teenage beauty queen was locked up three years ago due to her role in aiding El Chapo’s lucrative multi-billion-dollar drug empire. She was first arrested in February 2021 at Dulles International Airport, 26 miles from Washington D.C., over accusations of helping run El Chapo’s drug empire and aiding his prison escape in 2015 by smuggling a GPS watch to her husband.
Coronel was initially sentenced to three years in prison in November 2021 and a further four years of supervised release would follow. However, the prison sentence was cut down due to the 34-year-old swiftly admitting responsibility for her crimes, whilst she also obliged in handing over $1.5 million in drug trade money to the US government.
Her sentence occurred after she handed herself over to federal authorities and pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges, which included conspiring willingly to distribute drugs plus conspiracy to money laundering. Cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana were among the drugs willingly and intentionally distributed into the US over a lengthy period.
Coronel spent her time in prison at a federal facility in Fort Worth, Texas, before being transferred to a halfway house in Long Beach, California in June of this year. After Coronel was released on Wednesday, her attorney, Mariel Colon, offered a statement which read that Coronel is “very happy to move on with this new chapter in her life, and she is ready to be with her girls again”.
