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The wife of the notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was sentenced on Tuesday, November 30, to three years in prison for helping her husband run his drug cartel.
Per CNN, 31-year-old Emma Coronel Aispuro was also handed four years of supervised release and has been ordered to forfeit $1.5 million made from her 64-year-old husband's illegal operations.
Coronel Aispuro, a dual US-Mexican citizen, pleaded guilty to the charges on June 10 and as reported by the outlet, will get credit for the time she has served thus far.
Before she was sentenced in federal court in Washington, DC, she expressed remorse for having involved herself in Guzman's Sinaloa Cartel.
Coronel Aispuro, who married Guzman at the age of 18, said she was aware it would be hard to overlook the fact that she is the drug kingpin's wife and as such, the judge might feel it necessary to impose a lengthier sentence.
She said she takes full responsibility for her involvement in the cartel and called on the judge to think about her nine-year-old twins when sentencing her.
The prosecution team sought a 48-month prison sentence which is nine months less than the sentencing guideline minimum, five years of supervised release, and the surrender of $1.5 million.
Federal prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi said at the sentencing hearing that her role in the drug operation was not hugely significant and that the mother of two was "a cog in a very large wheel of a criminal organization."
Towards the end of the hearing, the judge said to Coronel Aispuro: "Good luck. Hope you raise your twins in a different environment than what you have experienced to date. Good luck."
Coronel Aispuro was arrested in February at Dulles International Airport near Washington, two years after Guzman was found guilty at a trial in New York City and handed a life sentence in prison.
In June, she pleaded guilty to helping her husband smuggle heroin, cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamine across the US border.
She also confessed to assisting in her husband's elaborate plan to escape through a tunnel dug underneath a prison in 2015 by smuggling in a GPS watch made to look like a food item.
