Zambada entered his plea in a Brooklyn federal court, two weeks after prosecutors said they wouldn’t seek the death penalty against him. He was arrested in Texas last year.
The 77-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy and one count of running a continuing criminal enterprise. He will be sentenced to a mandatory lift term in prison, with sentencing set for Jan. 13
Zambada had pleaded not guilty last year to a range of drug trafficking and related charges, including gun and money laundering offenses.
Prosecutors say Zambada presided over a violent, highly militarized cartel with a private security force armed with powerful weapons and a cadre of “sicarios,” or hitmen, that carried out assassinations, kidnappings and torture.
Lawyers for Zambada didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment Friday.
Guzmán was sentenced to life behind bars following his conviction in the same federal court in Brooklyn in 2019. His two sons, who ran a cartel faction, also face federal charges.
The Sinaloa cartel is Mexico’s oldest criminal group, with various incarnations dating to the 1970s. It is a drug trafficking power player: A former Mexican cabinet member was convicted of taking bribes to help the cartel.
Considered a good negotiator, Zambada was seen as the cartel’s strategist and dealmaker, thought to be more involved in its day-to-day doings than the more flamboyant Guzmán. Nevertheless, prosecutors have said Zambada also was enmeshed in the group’s violence, at one point ordering the murder of his own nephew.
U.S. law enforcement sought Zambada for more than two decades, but he was never arrested in any country until he was taken into custody in Texas last year. He had arrived in a private plane with one of Guzmán’s sons, Joaquín Guzmán López. Guzmán López has pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking charges in Chicago; his brother, Ovidio Guzmán López, pleaded guilty last month.
Zambada has said he was kidnapped in Mexico and taken against his will to the U.S. He had often been at odds with Guzmán’s sons, dubbed the Chapitos, a term that translates to “little Chapos.”
Zambada’s arrest touched off deadly fighting in Mexico between rival Sinaloa cartel factions, apparently pitting his loyalists against backers of Guzmán’s sons.