Alleged mistress of 'El Chapo' to be tried in D.C. on drug charge

San Diego Union-Tribune

Jul. 18, 2017 4:25 PM PT

SAN DIEGO —

The conspiracy case against an alleged mistress of drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán will be tried in Washington, D.C., according to a grand jury indictment filed Monday.

Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez López, 28, has been in federal custody in San Diego since being arrested June 21 at the Cross Border Xpress, a secure passage connecting Tijuana’s airport to San Diego. She was arrested on a charge of conspiracy to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine — an allegation stemming from a U.S. investigation into Guzmán’s Sinaloa drug cartel.

The investigation is based in part on wiretaps intercepted by U.S. federal agents in Arizona, according to the complaint filed in San Diego. Rather than try the case here, it has been refiled and will be prosecuted by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section in Washington, D.C., said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Mellor in San Diego.

On Tuesday, Sánchez pleaded not guilty to the conspiracy charge in the Washington, D.C., indictment during a hearing in San Diego. A hearing has been set for July 27 to transfer her custody as well.

Sánchez, a former legislator in the Mexico state of Sinaloa and long rumored to be Guzmán’s girlfriend, is accused of facilitating communications between the drug lord and the upper and lower echelons of his cartel. Specifically, she is accused in the complaint of coordinating the flow of illicit money to the cartel via text messages.

According to the investigation, she told a cartel member who was cooperating with U.S. agents that she was Guzmán’s girlfriend and that she was with him when he escaped from a Mexican police raid on Feb. 16, 2014, fleeing into a tunnel under a bathtub.

Sánchez is also under investigation in Mexico, charged with using a false ID to visit Guzmán in the Altiplano prison outside Mexico City in 2014. Sánchez has publicly claimed that the woman on the prison’s surveillance camera is not her, and also denied reports of being romantically involved with Guzmán.

After her arrest in San Diego last month, her Mexican lawyer told The San Diego Union-Tribune that she had come to the U.S. — not knowing that the State Department had canceled her visa — to explore some kind of asylum for her and her family.

However, that was never mentioned by attorneys in court in San Diego. Prosecutors said in an earlier court hearing that after she was apprehended at the Cross Border Xpress, she tried to run back into Mexico to escape arrest. U.S. Customs and Border Protection had to tackle her to stop her from fleeing, Mellor told the judge.

A San Diego federal judge denied her request for bond last month.

While her case will proceed in the District of Columbia, Guzmán’s will be continuing in a Brooklyn federal courtroom, where he is being prosecuted on allegations of running a massive drug operation. He was extradited from Mexico in January.

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