This frame grab from video, provided by the Mexican government, shows Ovidio Guzman Lopez being detained in Culiacan, Mexico. CEPROPIE VIA THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A son of notorious Mexican drug kingpin “El Chapo” pleaded guilty in July 2025 to United States government drug trafficking charges, becoming the first of the drug lord’s sons to enter a plea deal. Prosecutors allege Ovidio Guzman Lopez and his brother, Joaquin Guzman Lopez, ran a faction of the Sinaloa cartel. They became known locally as the “Chapitos,” or “little Chapos,” and federal authorities in 2023 described the operation as a massive effort to send staggering quantities of fentanyl into the U.S.
As part of a plea agreement, Ovidio Guzman Lopez admitted to helping oversee the production and smuggling of large quantities of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and fentanyl into the U.S., fueling a crisis that has contributed to tens of thousands of overdose deaths annually. Guzman Lopez pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering and firearms charges tied to his leadership role in the cartel. Terms of the deal, including sentencing recommendations or cooperation agreements, were not immediately disclosed.
Guzman Lopez’s sentencing was postponed while he cooperates with U.S. authorities. Whether he avoids a life in prison sentence depends on whether authorities say he has held up his end of the agreement.
Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School and former assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said that Guzman Lopez, by pleading guilty, may have “saved other family members … in this way, he has some control over who he’s cooperating against and what the world will know about that cooperation.” Levenson called the plea change a big step for the U.S. government and said Guzman Lopez could provide “a road map of how to identify members of the cartel.”
“This is big,” she said. “The best way for them to take out the cartel is to find out about its operations from an insider, and that’s what they get from his cooperation.”
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is serving a life sentence after being convicted in 2019 for his role as the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, having smuggled mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the U.S. over 25 years. The brothers allegedly assumed their father’s former role as leaders of the cartel.
Ovidio Guzman Lopez was arrested in Mexico in 2023 and extradited to the U.S. He initially pleaded not guilty but had signaled in recent months his intent to change his plea.
Joaquin Guzman Lopez and another longtime Sinaloa leader, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, were arrested in July 2024 in Texas after they landed in the U.S. on a private plane. Both men have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges. Their dramatic capture prompted a surge in violence in Mexico’s northern state of Sinaloa as two factions of the Sinaloa cartel clashed.