Emma Coronel, the wife of beauty queen Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, will be released from prison in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
The US-born 34-year-old was sentenced to three years in prison in 2021 after pleading guilty to three counts of aiding the Sinaloa drug cartel, including conspiracy to launder money, distribute illegal drugs and engage in financial transactions .
Coronel was transferred from Federal Medical Center Carswell (FMC) in Fort Worth, Texas, to a facility managed by Residential Reentry Management (RMM) Long Beach on May 30.
She also admitted acting as a courier between Guzman, who led the cartel, and other members of the organization while he was held in Mexico’s Altiplano prison after his 2014 arrest.
A federal court in Washington, D.C. sentenced her in November 2021 to three years, four of which would be supervised.
Emma Coronel, wife of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, will serve the remaining three months of her three-year sentence in a halfway house in California
Her sentencing judge said Coronel quickly accepted responsibility and agreed to forfeit nearly $1.5 million in proceeds from her criminal activities to the U.S. government, and her three-year sentence was later reduced.
The Bureau of Prisons said on its website that it would release Coronel from a low-security prison in Los Angeles on Wednesday, without providing further details.
Meanwhile, Guzman is serving a life sentence in the US after being extradited there in 2017 following two escapes from Mexican maximum-security prisons, once by digging a mile-long tunnel from his cell.
Coronel’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It is unclear whether she will be charged with drug trafficking or other crimes in Mexico.
The former beauty queen was also given an additional two years of supervised release.
She has two daughters with Guzman, whom she met when she was a young beauty queen and married in 2007 at the age of 18.
Coronel was facing a much longer prison sentence than the 36 months she was given after her legal team, which also represented El Chapo at his high-profile trial in New York, argued on her behalf for a sentence below the mandatory maximum if she came forward with everything she knew about the Sinaloa Cartel.
Under the safety valve exception, Coronel was required to “tell the government everything it knows about the crime and any related misconduct.”
Her criminal activities began in 2011 and continued at least until January 19, 2017, according to court documents.
The US-born 34-year-old was sentenced to three years in prison in 2021 after pleading guilty to three counts of aiding the Sinaloa drug cartel, including conspiracy to launder money, distribute illegal drugs and engage in financial transactions .
Coronel was transferred from Federal Medical Center Carswell (FMC) in Fort Worth, Texas, to a facility managed by Residential Reentry Management (RMM) Long Beach on May 30.
She also admitted acting as a courier between Guzman (pictured), who led the cartel, and other members of the organization while he was held in Mexico’s Altiplano prison following his 2014 arrest.
Coronel admitted that he acted as an intermediary between El Chapo and other members of the transnational criminal organization during his incarceration in Mexico’s Altiplano prison following his arrest in February 2014.
As part of the plot to help El Chapo escape prison, she bought property near the prison and gave him a watch with a GPS tracking device.
It was used to help the hired construction workers “dig a tunnel from that nearby property, under the prison” to his prison cell.
The infamous drug lord escaped in July 2015 and was recaptured in January 2016. In January 2017, he was extradited to the United States and sentenced to life in prison in July 2019.
In a book written by veteran Mexican crime reporter Anabel Hernández, Coronel described her marriage to El Chapo as “very normal” and claimed to have never witnessed the dark side of her husband, who was known for kidnapping his rivals, tortured and murdered. .
‘He’s a man like any other. He is not violent, he is not rude,” she said in the book. “I’ve never heard him say a bad word, I’ve never seen him get excited or mad at anyone.”