Giving up his taxpayer-funded public defenders, JoaquĂn Guzmán Loera, the Mexican drug lord best known as El Chapo, has hired a private lawyer: Jeffrey Lichtman, a combative legal defense specialist who is himself best known for keeping the Mafia scion, John Gotti Jr., out of prison at a trial 12 years ago.
Last week, Fernich and Colón Miró visited him at the supermax prison ADX in Florence, Colorado, known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.” She said that El Chapo isn’t adjusting well to life in a supermax. Though he now gets outdoor exercise time, he gets even fewer visits.
One night in July, El Chapo got a new neighbor. After Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport, he was put in a cell three doors down from El Chapo at the MCC — though that arrangement only lasted one night.
Not long after Epstein’s arrest, Colón Miró was brought onto his legal team by Marc Fernich, another of Guzmán’s attorneys who took on the Epstein case. “She doesn’t scare,” said Fernich.
In oral arguments before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, attorney Marc Fernich cited a news report that during deliberations jurors were exposed to salacious claims that were barred from the trial, including that Guzman sexually abused girls he referred to as “vitamins” that gave him energy.
Jeffrey LichtmanHer attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, said that Coronel Aispuro may be in danger if she were ever to return to Mexico, following media reports that she cooperated with US authorities. "I'm not sure that she could ever go back home," he said.
The 26-Year-Old Defense Attorney Whose First Two Clients Were El Chapo and Jeffrey Epstein. In April 2017, Mariel ColĂłn MirĂł was four months out of law school and looking for a way to earn money while she waited on the results of the New York State bar exam.
A lawyer for Mexican drug lord JoaquĂn “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera asked a federal appeals court in Manhattan on Monday to grant him a new trial, saying a media report of alleged juror misconduct was reason to overturn his conviction for running a narcotics empire.
roughly US$1 billionHis drug empire made Guzmán a billionaire, and he was ranked the 10th richest man in Mexico and 1,140th in the world in 2011, with a net worth of roughly US$1 billion. To assist his drug trafficking, the Sinaloa Cartel also built a shipping and transport empire.
Coronel, 31, a dual U.S.-Mexican citizen, agreed to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors and admitted to three federal counts: conspiracy to commit money laundering; conspiracy to aid and abet the distribution of heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines for importation into the United States with Guzmán's Sinaloa ...
Damaso Lopez, a former prison official turned associate of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, testified Wednesday about details of Guzman's escape. In exchange, Lopez testified, he received help, too. Guzman allegedly gave him about $10,000 and gave him a home worth 1.5 million Mexican pesos, about $78,000.
He has been serving a life sentence at Colorado's Supermax, the most secure federal prison, and was also ordered to forfeit $12.7 billion.
Security forces suspect he is hiding in the rural terrains of Jalisco, Michoacán, Nayarit, and/or Colima, and is guarded by mercenaries with former military training. In February 2022 unconfirmed reports began to surface that El Mencho died in a private hospital in Guadalajara.
Ismael ZambadaIsmael "El Mayo" ZambadaIsmael ZambadaOther namesMayo, M-Z, Padrino, el SeñorOccupationLeader of Sinaloa CartelHeight5 ft 9 in (1.75 m)PredecessorJoaquin Guzmán Loera10 more rows
The name she’d googled was JoaquĂn “El Chapo” Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, the infamous leader of the Sinaloa cartel. ColĂłn MirĂł would go on to join El Chapo’s trial team as an attorney and impress his seasoned defense attorneys so much that one of them hired her to join Jeffrey Epstein’s defense team before the convicted sex offender committed suicide.
El Chapo responded by putting his hand against the glass between them. She reciprocated to form a kind of maximum-security handshake. Over the next three hours, Colón Miró and Guzmán chatted about their backgrounds, politics (he asked her about President Trump and Mayor de Blasio), and the upcoming elections in Mexico.
Aside from one hour of television a day, Colón Miró’s meetings with El Chapo were his only substantial interaction with the outside world. “MCC is a very inhumane place, especially if you’re in the solitary housing unit,” Colón Miró said. “It is not a sanitary place. You can see rats walking around. It is nasty.
At first, Colón Miró saw Guzmán three to four times a week. Soon, she began visiting the MCC six or seven days a week. She walked him through every piece of discovery and his attorneys’ plans for opening statements, cross-examination, and summation.
In April 2017 , Mariel ColĂłn MirĂł was four months out of law school and looking for a way to earn money while she waited on the results of the New York State bar exam. When she found a job listing on Craigslist for a Spanish-speaking paralegal, she applied immediately.
When Colón Miró was admitted to the bar in September 2018, Guzmán asked her if she would join his defense team as a trial attorney. Colón Miró had a job lined up at the Legal Aid Society, but she didn’t want to abandon a client with whom she’d become very close. She accepted El Chapo’s offer.
The first time Colón Miró went to meet Guzmán at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Manhattan, she was supposed to go with the attorney who had hired her. But the attorney left her wallet on the subway and, without ID, wasn’t allowed to enter the MCC, leaving Colón Miró to go on alone.
Immediately after taking the bench in Brooklyn federal court, Judge Brian Cogan announced that the attorneys in the Chapo case wanted to “discuss the potential effects of a certain media coverage that tangentially related to the case over the weekend.”.
A former warden of Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, where Guzman is jailed during the week, said Lichtman’s claim regarding the belly dancer was “definitely going to trigger a number of inquiries,” potentially involving the FBI.