Emma Coronel, wife of Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, has left prison after serving 19 months of her three-year sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering for the Sinaloa Cartel, and will serve the rest of her punishment in a house for inmates in Los Angeles (California), as confirmed by Noticias Telemundo with information from the Federal Bureau of Prisons and in conversation with Coronel's team of lawyers.
Coronel will be able to go out to work, study a trade and undergo rehabilitation treatment for drug use, but he will have to spend the night at home again, according to these sources. The information was advanced by Univision.
Coronel was sentenced in November 2021 to three years in prison (one less than requested by the Prosecutor's Office) for conspiring with her husband in the criminal organization he led. El Chapo had previously been sentenced to life in prison in February 2019 and is incarcerated in Colorado's maximum-security prison.
Coronel, 32, was arrested in February 2021 at Dulles Airport, Virginia. She pleaded guilty in June to three countsof helping her husband run his criminal empire: conspiracy to traffic cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin and marijuana; conspiracy to launder money; and transactions related to drug trafficking. The prosecution said she benefited financially from her husband's criminal activities.
The federal court of the District of Columbia also sentenced her to five years of probation and the payment of almost 1.5 million dollars for her participation in the Sinaloa Cartel's businesses.
Coronel is the third wife of El Chapo Guzmán, with whom he has two 11-year-old twin daughters. She was born in San Francisco, California, but her family took her to Mexico when she was very young. At age 17 she was crowned queen of the Canelas Fair, in Durango, and El Chapo noticed her. Her life changed forever: from being a beauty queen to being the wife of the most wanted criminal.