El Chapo’s wife Emma Coronel Aispuro sentenced to three years for helping run cartel

Some couples start to look alike — but El Chapo and his wife started to crook alike.

Emma Coronel Aispuro, the beauty queen wife of infamous drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison for helping run the murderous Sinaloa Cartel.

Aispuro, 32, pleaded guilty in June to helping El Chapo run his operation. She was arrested in February at Dulles Airport near Washington, DC.

Coronel, a US-born former beauty queen, admitted to conspiracy to distribute thousands of kilos of heroin, coke, meth and marijuana while working for her husband in Mexico. She also pleaded guilty to money laundering.

Prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo that she “attempted to aid and abet the goals” of her husband, who she married on her 18th birthday in 2007, and cited her role in his notorious 2015 escape from a Mexican prison.

Emma Coronel Aispuro's husband Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is currently serving a life sentence in a max security prison in Colorado.
Emma Coronel Aispuro’s husband Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is currently serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado.
REUTERS
FILE - In this Dec. 6, 2018 file photo, Emma Coronel Aispuro, wife of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, arrives to federal court in New York. Despite her status as the wife of the world’s most notorious drug boss, Coronel Aispuro lived mostly in obscurity -- until her husband went to prison for life.
Emma Coronel Aispuro arrives to federal court in New York on Dec. 6, 2018.
AP

They claimed she bribed Mexican prison officials to take good care of El Chapo while he was behind bars and acted as a go-between for her husband and his henchmen, sneaking a GPS watch into the prison for him. Gusman is serving life behind bars in federal prison in Colorado, where he is locked in his cell for 23 hours a day. 

Prosecutors had recommended Coronel serve only four years and pay a fine of almost $1.5 million, saying in the memo she had no criminal history and “swiftly accepted responsibility for her actions.”  

“We’re pleased with the result and we’re pleased with the court recognizing her very minimal role,” Coronel’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, told The Post on Tuesday, adding that she agreed to the $1.5 million forfeiture. 

Attorney Jeffery Lichtman delivers remarks to the news media following the sentencing hearing for his client Emma Coronel Aispuro on November 30, 2021.
Attorney Jeffery Lichtman delivers remarks to the media following the sentencing hearing for his client Emma Coronel Aispuro on November 30, 2021.
SHAWN THEW/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Coronel made headlines in 2019 when she laughed in Brooklyn federal court as her husband’s mistress sobbed on the stand at his trial, and garnered attention for showing up to court in designer outfits.

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