El Chapo's Girlfriend Pleads Innocent in D.C.Federal Court

Translated by Yaqui for Borderland Beat from: La Zeta

Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez, "La Chapa Diputada"

By: Carlos Alvarez, Aug 29, 2017

In a US Federal Court appearance in Washington, D.C. that lasted only 16 minutes Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez pled innocent to the charges of drug trafficking imposed upon her.

Judge Michael Harvey accepted the petition to keep her in custody and scheduled another appearance with Judge Robin Meriweather on Friday, Sept 1, 2017 to resolve the issue of Sanchez Lopez's incarceration while the trial is pending.

According to court records - as cited by the newspaper Reforma - the judge also issued an "alert on the physical and / or mental health" of Sánchez López, directed to the Medical Unit of the Department of Corrections of the District of Columbia, which has her under Custody.

The 28-year-old former deputy from Sinaloa had asked to remain in San Diego,Ca - where she was arrested last June - but was transferred on Friday, August 25, to Washington DC by the US Marshals Service, in answer to an emergency appeal to the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Justice Department notified the Mexican Consulate in Washington, as Sánchez López is entitled to legal assistance from Mexican authorities. In addition, the former deputy asked to be allowed to appoint a private lawyer.

The former lawmaker was arrested on June 21 while attempting to enter San Diego, through the Otay Garita Mesa in Tijuana. A Border Patrol agent discovered that the US State Department had canceled her visa and she was wanted for suspected drug trafficking.

Sánchez López was indicted in San Diego District Court for criminal conspiracy to distribute five kilos of cocaine in the United States between January 2013 and January 2017.

On February 17, 2014, the former local deputy of Sinaloa, escaped a police raid by the Secretary of the Navy of Mexico (Semar), along with Joaquin Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, "El Chapo", by a tunnel that connected to the public drainage system of Culiacán.

At her suggestion, both fled to Cosala, the municipal district for which she was a local legislator, where

she was nominated by a coalition between the Sinaloan (PAS), National Action Party (PAN), and Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and the Labor Party (PT).

This was documented by the US Department of Homeland Security, based in Nogales, Arizona, which, with the assistance of an informant infiltrated the Sinaloa Cartel, was able to obtain information on the activities of Sánchez López and her sentimental relationship with the capo.

"The informant" - according to a document signed by agent Felix Trevino - "reports that ''Tere'' aka Sánchez López told her that she escaped the raid and convinced Guzmán Loera to go with her to Cosalá, where she was a ministerial deputy .

According to the indictment of the US Department of Justice in the Southern California District Court, Sánchez López conspired to smuggle drugs and launder money for the Sinaloa Cartel.

This is supported by two phone calls and the testimony of a person who was captured in the United States, whom they linked to the trafficker, but that person offered to be an undercover agent and now is identified as a "collaborator."

The first telephone intervention was made in September 2013, when Sánchez López was elected local ministerial deputy. At the time she used the pseudonym "Piedra" to speak on behalf of Guzmán Loera and share contacts, as well as give directions to carry out economic transactions for $500,000. The second telephone intervention was in January 2014 and was found among the messages of the legislator.

In them, Sánchez López used the pseudonym "Maico" to indicate how 380,000  pesos should be laundered for illegal drug trafficking. The HSI cites the testimony of the "collaborator", who entered into direct communication with a person who called herself "Tere" and who intended to contact the sons of "El Chapo", the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.

The "informant" - states the legal document -, met with the woman, who claimed to be the girlfriend of "El Chapo". Then, at the request of the agents, he identified Lucero Sánchez López with a photograph of "Tere" or "Maico", the nicknames which she then used.

The former deputy asked the "informant" to help "El Chapo's" sons, "Los Menores", as they are referred to, because it was necessary to deliver goods from a Costa Rican man by the name of Óscar Berrocal Sandi, who was an operator for the Sinaloa Cartel in Ecuador.

Guzman Loera was recaptured for the second time on January 6, 2016, and is currently being held at a New York Correctional Center, charged with drug trafficking and money laundering.

The former local deputy for Cosalá only rose three times to take a stand in her political career, one of which was to denounce alleged abuses by the Secretary of the Navy in the Sierra Madre Occidental.

The former lawmaker allegedly used a false voter's credential, with which she visited "El Chapo" in 2014 while he was still being held in the federal maximum-security prison El Altiplano, in Almoloya de Juarez, in the state of Mexico, before his escape through the now infamous tunnel under the bathroom facilities in his solitary cell, in June 2015.