Adult Detention Center via AP This photo provided by the Alexandria Adult Detention Center shows Emma Coronel Aispuro. The Justice Department says Emma Coronel Aispuro was arrested at Dulles International Airport on Monday, Feb. 22, 2021. Alexandria Adult Detention Center via AP
- Emma Coronel Aispuro was arrested in Virginia on Monday.
- Drug lord El Chapo’s former wife is accused of helping her husband run his drug empire.
- Her pursuit of fame might have made her a target for US authorities, AP reported.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Emma Coronel Aispuro was arrested at Dulles International Airport in Virginia on Monday.
The wife of Mexico’s most notorious drug lord, Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Loera, is charged with conspiring to distribute drugs for importation into the US, the US Department of Justice said.
Coronel Aispuro is also alleged to have conspired to help her husband, the Sinaloa Cartel leader, escape a Mexican prison in 2015.
Experts have said that the former beauty queen might have become a target for arrest due to the media attention she has garnered in recent years, according to an AP report.
‘This breaks a tradition of secrecy’
“Emma had remained anonymous like practically all partners of Sinaloa cartel capos,” the executive editor of Sinaloa’s Noroeste newspaper, Adrian Lopez, told AP. “Then, she begins to take on more of a celebrity attitude… This breaks a tradition of secrecy and a style specifically within the leadership of the Sinaloa cartel.”
Coronel Aispuro, a dual US-Mexican citizen, married Guzman in 2007. For almost a decade after that, Coronel largely maintained a low profile.
This all changed in 2018 at her husband’s trial in a Brooklyn court for masterminding a multibillion-dollar drug operation.
Before the trial, Coronel Aispuro gave an interview in which she said that she was concerned for Guzman’s health and that she hadn’t spoken to her husband in 15 months.
She was then a regular presence at the trial, attracting media attention for her husband’s unflinching loyalty. She defends her husband even as prosecutors shared numerous instances of his infidelity, Reuters reported.
© Craig Ruttle/AP Photo Emma Coronel Aispuro, center, wife of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, leaves federal court, Monday, Feb. 11, 2019, Craig Ruttle/AP PhotoAt the time of the high-profile El Chapo trial, Coronel also became an unsuspecting style icon.
Her fashion choices and designer outfits elevated to her a level of celebrity.
On one occasion, Coronel Aispuro made the headlines after both she and her husband wore a burgundy velvet smoking jacket in court.
Coronel Aispuro appeared on a reality TV show
Guzman was convicted and sentenced to life behind bars in 2019.
Just months later, Coronel Aispuro began to profit from her newfound fame by launching a fashion line.
“I have a project for a line of clothing,” Coronel Aispuro wrote on a now-deleted Instagram post. “It is my goal to promote my style and Joaquin’s.”
The clothing line, eponymously named “El Chapo,” bears the convicted drug lord’s signature.
The 31-year-old also appeared on a television reality show. “It’s sad that they judge us without knowing us,” she said while appearing on the debut episode of VH1’S “Cartel Crew.”
Coronel Aispuro has, in recent months, used an Instagram account to post photographs of herself. Despite only publishing five photos, she has over 600,000 followers on her verified account.
‘She could become a target’
According to Mexican investigative journalist Anabel Hernandez, the first reporter to interview Coronel Aispuro, the former beauty queen may have sought fame to make her jailed husband jealous.
His wife was “very, very mad and very hurt” by the details of Guzman’s infidelity, which became public knowledge during his trial, Hernandez told AP.
Consequently, Hernandez said that Coronel Aispuro “decided to take revenge, and the way to get her revenge was to make her husband see what he was losing.”
Her newfound fame, however, reportedly concerned those close to her.
Hernandez spoke to the 31-year-old’s mother, who was concerned that it could make her daughter a target, AP reported.
“Her mother was also worried that an enemy cartel could harm Emma because she was unleashed, was out in the street a lot, the clubs, excessive in her social life,” the journalist told AP.
Hernandez also told AP that she suspects the US authorities recognized Coronel Aispuro’s new glamorous lifestyle was an attempt to betray her husband. Identifying an opportunity to pressure her into betrayal, Hernandez said, they moved to arrest her.
Prison
Coronel Aispuro is accused of helping El Chapo run his drug empire and conspiring to coordinate his successful escape from prison.
She is currently being held temporarily at a jail in Alexandria, Virginia.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Judge Robin Meriweather said she would remain in jail pending a bail hearing.
If convicted on all charges, Coronel faces up to life in prison and a potential fine of up to $10 million.
According to the New York Post, she could be poised to turn informer and be a candidate for the witness protection program.
“She’s definitely cooperating,” a federal law enforcement source told The Post.
“Emma wants to get far away from the violence and has always wanted to live in the US,” said the source.
