El Chapo’s wife released from US custody after completing 3-year prison sentence

The wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman was released from federal custody Wednesday after completing a three-year sentence for helping him run his multibillion-dollar criminal empire, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said.

Emma Colonel Aispuro, who pleaded guilty in 2021 on three federal offenses as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors, had been transferred from a Texas prison to a halfway house in California before her release. She will now serve four years of supervised release.

Col. Aispuro expressed “genuine regret for any harm” when she was sentenced after pleading guilty to charges including money laundering conspiracy and engaging in transactions with a foreign narcotics trafficker.

She also helped her husband plan a dramatic escape through a tunnel dug under a prison in Mexico in 2015 by smuggling him a GPS watch disguised as a food product, prosecutors said. This helped those digging the tunnel locate its location and reach it.

El Chapo, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, was recaptured the following year. It was sentenced to life behind bars in a US prison in 2019 for a massive drug conspiracy that sowed murder and mayhem for more than two decades. He insisted his trial in New York was unfair and told the judge his case “was tainted.”