The wife of drug lord Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman has been released from prison and transferred to community confinement.
Emma Coronel Aispuro had originally been sentenced to three years in jail after being found guilty of conspiring to distribute drugs and launder money.
Despite serving less than half her term, the former beauty queen has been moved to community confinement, which takes place either at a halfway house or in home confinement.
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Back in 2021, the 33-year-old was arrested at Dulles International Airport, Washington for her involvement with the Sinaloa drug cartel.
At her sentencing, prosecutors had stated that she’d played a ‘minimal role’ in the organised crime gang and had mainly been supporting her husband, El Chapo, who she’d married as a teen.
In a later interview with Reuters, federal prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi told the outlet: "While the overall effect of the defendant's conduct was significant, the defendant's actual role was a minimal one. The defendant acted primarily in support of her husband.”
However, Coronel was also fined $1.5 million in connection to the multi-billion-dollar criminal empire and will also have five years of supervised release in addition to her prison sentence.
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Less than two years later, the Bureau of Prisons confirmed that Coronel had been moved to community confinement.
The system is similar to house arrest, with those under confinement required to wear GPS bracelets with their movements tracked as they serve out the last 12-18 months of their sentence.
Coronel will now finish her sentence while being overseen by Long Beach Residential Reentry Management in California.
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Meanwhile, her husband remains at the notorious supermax prison United States Penitentiary Florence, in Colorado.
El Chapo, who was head of the Sinaloa cartel, was sentenced to life behind bars for crimes that spanned a quarter of a century.
He was indicted on charges relating to trafficking hundreds of tonnes of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and marijuana to the United States, along with money laundering and weapons-related offences.
While he is known for his high-profile drug empire, he also got a name for himself for his prison breaks.
In 2001, he broke out by hiding in a laundry cart and spent the next 13 years in and around Sinaloa in hiding.
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After being recaptured in 2014, he escaped once again in July 2015 through a mile-long tunnel that took him out of maximum-security Altiplano prison.
Topics: Drugs, True Crime, El Chapo
Katherine Sidnell