Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, was released from prison Tuesday after being sentenced in 2021 to three years for her involvement in her husband’s criminal activities.
“We can confirm Emma Coronel Aispuro was released from the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) on Sept. 13, 2023,” a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons tells PEOPLE.
In court documents shared online in 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice named Coronel Aispuro, 34, as a co-conspirator in the activities of the Sinola Cartel, controlled by Guzmán Loera, between 2011 and 2017.
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The department said that Coronel Aispuro, a dual U.S.-Mexican citizen, played a role in Guzmán Loera’s escape from a Mexican prison on July 11, 2015, by buying property near the facility and providing her husband a watch that contained a GPS tracking device– thus, ”allowing co-conspirators to dig a tunnel from that nearby property, under the prison, to Guzmán Loera’s cell.”
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Guzmán Loera was later apprehended and sentenced to life in a U.S. prison in 2019, the Associated Press reported.
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Coronel Aispuro was taken into custody in February 2021 on international drug trafficking charges. In June of that year, she pleaded guilty to three criminal counts, per court documents: conspiring to distribute heroin, cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine; conspiring to launder money; and engaging in transactions and dealings with her husband, who the government deemed as a foreign narcotics trafficker.
“She is very happy to put this behind her,” her lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman told the media including the AP about his client following the plea agreement. “She didn’t expect to get arrested after her husband received life in prison. So, this is obviously a troubling time. But we’re going to get past it.”
In November 2021, Coronel Aispuro received a sentence of three years in prison, per NBC News. At the sentencing, as reported by Telemundo, she offered remorse: “I am here before you asking you for forgiveness.”
The sentence given to Coronel Aispuro at the time was less than the four years that prosecutors had wanted her to serve—after the judge considered that she had no prior criminal record and that her role in the cartel was minimal, CNN reported in 2021.
As part of the plea deal, in addition to the prison sentence, Coronel Aispuro also had to forfeit nearly $1.5 million as a result of the illicit gains from Guzmán Loera’s activities, The New York Times reported.
A former beauty queen, Coronel Aispuro married Guzmán Loera when she was 18 years old, The Times reported.
Coronel Aispuro’s attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, told PEOPLE in an email Thursday that he had no comment about his client’s release.
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