Feds recommend 17 years in prison for Vicente Zambada, out in 5

BrownTown for Borderland Beat from ChicagoSun

 ‘Unrivaled’ cooperation against drug lords, prosecutors say

Federal prosecutors in Chicago are asking a judge to sentence one of Mexico’s most powerful narcotics traffickers to 17 years in prison, giving him a break because of the extraordinary help he gave in providing information about leaders of his Sinaloa drug cartel and their rivals.

Vicente Zambada-Niebla, 44, coordinated trains, ships, Boeing 747s and submarines to move cocaine from South America to Mexico between 1996 and 2008. He also supervised Margarito Flores and Pedro Flores, twins from Chicago who smuggled tons of coke to Chicago. They both got 14-year sentences after they cooperated against the Sinaloa cartel.

Zambada-Niebla moved his family to Spain and Canada, only to get pulled back to Mexico to live and work under the umbrella of his father, the Sinaloa cartel’s shadowy co-leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who remains on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s most-wanted list.

Zambada-Niebla reached out to the DEA to resolve a federal charge against him in Washington. He was arrested in Mexico in 2009. After being extradited to Chicago, where he faced other charges, he eventually began cooperating with federal authorities.

He was debriefed about his knowledge of the inner-workings of the narcotics world more than 100 times. What prosecutors called his “unrivaled” cooperation led to charges against dozens of “high-level” targets and hundreds of their associates in federal courts across the United States, prosecutors said.

Earlier this year, his testimony helped the government convict kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera in Brooklyn. Guzman is expected to get a life sentence.

But Zambada-Niebla — known as El Vicentillo or Mayito — will probably meet a different fate when he’s sentenced in federal court in Chicago on May 30. Even though he faces a potential life sentence, prosecutors have asked Chief U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo to give him 17 years in prison because he testified against Guzman and other cartel bosses.

Because he’s already been in custody for a decade, Zambada-Niebla would, in effect, face about five more years in prison — including so-called “good time” — if the judge agrees with the recommendation by prosecutors.

Zambada-Niebla was charged in 2009 in Chicago in a far-reaching federal indictment against Guzman and his Sinaloa cartel associates. In a call arranged by federal authorities, El Mayo gave his son the go-ahead to snitch on the cartel, according to law-enforcement sources involved in the investigation.

Prosecutors aren’t downplaying the gravity of Zambada-Niebla’s activities. They noted that he passed along messages from his father to assassins in the Sinaloa cartel to carry out multiple killings.

They also said Zambada-Niebla and his family “will live the rest of their lives in danger of being killed in retribution” for his cooperation. They will be under government protection.

“These very real threats to him and his family make a return to drug trafficking next to impossible,” prosecutors wrote.