Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, El Chapo's American protégés.

The twins were probably the largest cocaine and heroin traffickers Chicago's

ever seen.

Peter and Jay Flores, two working class Chicago brothers who reached the heights

of the drug trade.

The twins were directly responsible for moving $2 billion.

Earning the trust of the world's most wanted man, notorious international drug

lord Joaquin Guzman Loera.

We were living every drug dealer's dream.

Tonight, Peter and Jay Flores are in hiding. But for the first time on

television, their wives are ready to tell the whole story.

Our husbands were making $10 million a month in profit for talking LeBron James

money.

It's a life of extravagant cars, private zoos, and gold -plated narco luxury.

But when the twins end up in the sights of Uncle Sam, the protégés will make the

fateful choice to betray their mentor.

And El Chapo's empire will never be the same.

It's crystal clear what would happen to you and your family if he didn't do what

he wanted.

All of a sudden, these men just run in, and we're down on the floor with AK -47s

to our heads.

The sun comes up on an undisclosed location not far from the U .S.-Mexico

border. For the locals, it's just another day in paradise.

But for one family that crossed the Sinaloa drug cartel, it's another day in

hiding.

Over the lifespan of their drug empire, our husbands moved 100 tons of cocaine.

Meet Olivia and Mia Flores.

They've been in hiding ever since their husbands, Peter and Jay Flores.

decided to exit the drug trade and cooperate with the U .S. investigation

Joaquin Guzman Loera, a .k .a. El Chapo.

Chapo was a very serious man.

However, with our husbands, he treated them like his sons.

To this day, the Flores family remains in danger, their lives subject to

retribution from freelance killers still loyal to Chapo.

But Olivia and Mia have agreed to step out of the shadows for the first time to

sit down for an exclusive interview with American Greed and open up about their

time as cartel wives married to Peter and Jay and, for better or worse, to the

Sinaloa cartel.

Our husbands were a huge asset to Chapo Guzman.

They were American, they spoke English, and then they spoke Spanish. Our

husbands were able to maneuver in both the streets of Chicago all the way up to

the mountaintops of Sinaloa, and they were able to navigate both worlds.

Navigating both worlds is also something that comes naturally to Olivia and Mia.

Long before they were cartel wives, they were daughters to two of Chicago's

finest.

I come from a family of law enforcement. My father's a police officer.

I also come from a family of law enforcement. My dad, all my uncles,

they're all on the Chicago Police Force.

It's an odd quirk of this storied city that honest cops and criminals often

side by side in Chicago's working class neighborhood.

And like the Capulets and Montagues, their children sometimes fall in love.

When you think about somebody in that drug world, you have this vision of

somebody being very aggressive, very powerful, very vicious.

They were just really, really different.

Peter and Jay were very polite. Very soft -spoken. And they just carried

themselves so much different that I didn't understand what they were doing

the drug trade.

Peter and Jay's life in the drug trade begins in Chicago's Mexican -American

neighborhood called La Villita, or Little Village.

That's where they were born in 1981.

And even in the cradle, the twins had a head start on the game.

The twins, for lack of a better way to describe it, were born into the drug

trade. The twins' father was a known narco -trafficker.

By day, the twins' father, Margarito Flores, drives a forklift at a local

factory. But his side hustle is moving loads of narcotics up from Mexico.

When the twins were little, they basically served as human cover loads,

their father would bring them back and forth across the border, their car

or they would sit physically on top of bales of marijuana that were hidden in

the car to reduce suspicion as the car was going back and forth across the

border. When they were children, they were...

the lookouts for their dad.

So they knew about the drug business even before, you know, they went to high

school. In the mid -1990s, the twins' father moves back to Mexico while Peter

and Jay stay put in Chicago.

Using their father's cartel contacts, the twins begin buying pure, uncut

from Mexican suppliers like El Chapo. But unlike their old man, the Flores

are innovators when it comes to distribution.

And their new ideas pay off in a big way.

Before the twin, the cartels would use, like, the Latin kings.

And the way that they operated, it was territorial.

You owned a territory.

And you guarded your territory with guns and blood.

But when the twins came along, they broke all the norms.

They tapped all the gangs.

They made alliances with everybody.

Unlike previous generations, the twins begin to break down dividing lines in

of America's most segregated cities, doing wholesale business with an

market of like -minded buyers.

When it comes to money, they see no color. It was just green.

So the twins worked with African -Americans. They worked with Puerto

as opposed to just Mexican gangs.

So they expanded because the twins were not about territory. They were about

money. In the end, everybody understood the language of money.

They weren't even adults before they were millionaires. As the twins'

base grows, so does their need for cocaine.

They are now buying upwards of 10 ,000 kilos a month.

And 2 ,000 miles away, their chief supplier is starting to take notice.

From his perch atop the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin Guzman Loera is almost a

mythical figure in the drug trade.

He was a logistics genius.

Jack Riley spent years hunting El Chapo as a senior official at the DEA.

His ability to move goods across the border and deliver them in the internal

part of the United States was unmatched. El Chapo first popped up on the radar

in 1993.

with the discovery of his drug tunnels running underneath the U .S.-Mexico

border. The fact of the matter is this border that you see here this morning is

under siege by drug traffickers. And at this point, significant ties to the

Joaquin Guzman organization have been established.

He comes up with these creative ideas that end up working for him.

Chapo's game -changing innovations run the gamut, from fully engineered tunnels

underneath the border to homemade submarines that ferry drugs through the

Pacific.

It's insane. It's something you've never seen before.

And he's seen as untouchable, thanks in part to his daring escape from a Mexico

prison in 2001.

So what he did was he bribed somebody in the laundry unit to smuggle him out in

a laundry cart.

By 2004, he sought to traffic nearly $3 billion worth of narcotics around the

globe.

Still, he wants more, more access to U .S. markets, more money.

And in the twins, he sees kindred spirits.

He was an innovator himself, and he recognized in the twins that they were

smart, that they were really an expanding, just like Chappell. So they

in common.

It was effectively a no -brainer business decision to bring them directly

fold. They basically were granted access into the innermost circle of the

cartel. They received the most favorable pricing structure that the cartel was

willing to offer.

And so from that point on, they became the largest distribution point in the

United States for the Sinaloa cartel.

With his new Chicago connection, El Chapo tapped the assets that originally

the city on the map.

An ideal location and a ready workforce.

Chicago was really Chapo's hub.

It's in the middle of the country, the rails, the interstates. I mean, that's

why many Fortune 500 companies are located in Chicago.

Outside of Mexico, Chicago probably ranks third or fourth of the largest

national population.

So there's tens of thousands of hardworking Mexicans in Chicago, and

hide his organization amongst them. So his organization was well entrenched,

there's 100 ,000 documented street gang members in the Chicago area.

who largely make their living putting dope on the street. And Chapo used them,

if you will, as their subcontractors. The tentacles of the Sinaloa cartel had

made it directly into the heart of the United States.

Working with Chapo's supply and their own wholesale customers, the twins are

eventually moving about two tons and $145 million worth of cocaine a month.

With about half of it staying in the Chicago area and the rest pushed on to

other parts of the country, throughout the Midwest to Philadelphia, D .C., New

York, as far north as Canada.

They opened wholesale markets in places as far as Vancouver for the Sinaloa

cartel. And it turned into this massive empire.

So for Chapo, it was a gold mine.

Next on American Greed. When you're making that type of money, it's just you

feel like you're invincible.

The twins are summoned to a mountaintop in Mexico for a sit down with El Chapo

and to deal with the devil.

I mean, you can just imagine that you're going to pay the price for that life.

People pay with their lives.

In 2003, Chicago twins Peter and Jay Flores are smuggling an unprecedented

amount of narcotics from Mexico into the Midwest.

They flooded the city of Chicago with drugs, with tons and tons of cocaine.

They were that tunnel from the St. Louis cartel to the streets of Chicago in the

U .S. The brothers are so good at distribution that the big boss, El

decides to tap them for an even more lucrative venture.

In 2004, he summons the twins to a meeting in Sinaloa.

There's a new product on the cartel's lineup, and the twins are going to

distribute it.

Opioids were becoming more and more in demand in the United States, and the

cartel was smart enough to realize that the profit margins on heroin were

dramatically higher than their profit margins on cocaine.

Unlike cocaine, which the Mexican cartels must import from Colombia,

be sourced directly from the poppy fields of Sinaloa.

The drug itself may be deadlier, but the economics are simply irresistible.

Their production cost was hundreds of dollars, basically, per kilo.

At that time, they could sell a kilo of heroin in Chicago for around $55 ,000.

And the tragic consequence was it was the perfect storm for the cartel. The

demand was there, and the profit margin to them was off the chart.

It's 8 o 'clock on a Wednesday morning, a vacant lot on Chicago's west side.

An undercover camera catches illegal drug sales already underway.

Federal agents say these are heroin deals.

We began seeing tremendous amounts of high -grade, cheap heroin hit the

By 2005, American demand for opioids is skyrocketing. And the addicted are

seeking stronger and cheaper stuff wherever they can find it.

prescribing and pharmacists won't fill it. It's expensive on the street. You

can't steal it from your grandmother's medicine cabinet all the time. And the

next thing down the road is obviously heroin.

The seller is the woman in the gray sweatshirt offering $10 bags of heroin

about a dozen buyers waiting anxiously in line with cash in hand. So we really

began to see heroin use go up, overdoses go up, a different population using

heroin.

Virtually every walk of life, every social economic level, from affluent

suburbs to the inner city, we began seeing high school age kids using

overdosing, and all of those things that associate with narcotic trafficking,

violent crime, shootings.

There were 19 homicides in one weekend, almost 200 shootings, and all of that,

in my mind, narcotic related.

Chapa was calling the shots, sitting on his mountain in Sinaloa, and he didn't

care who died.

While Chapa remains far beyond the reach of federal authorities in Chicago, his

mainline into the U .S. does not.

Peter and Jay Flores have been operating below the radar for years, but they are

about to feel the heat.

The Flores brothers were crucial.

The twins were probably the largest cocaine and heroin traffickers Chicago's

ever seen.

that became Chapo's number one customer in the United States.

When you're making that type of money, it's just you feel like you're

invincible. And in reality, you're going to pay the price for that life. People

pay with their lives.

The Flores twins' luck runs out in 2005 when one of their wholesale customers

gets busted and gives them up to the feds.

Peter and Jay are indicted on felony drug charges and a federal warrant is

out for their arrest.

Our husbands were brought up to elude law enforcement.

And them going to prison was like their biggest nightmare.

The Flores twins are at a crossroads.

They are looking at a decade behind bars in the U .S. Or a fresh start in their

ancestral home south of the border.

They were in the middle of this drug conspiracy.

They knew that they were going to have to go to prison for 10 years to life.

And so they decided to move to Mexico just to avoid going to prison.

Next on American Greed. We were living every drug dealer's dream.

Four kids from the streets of Chicago living the narco lifestyle in Mexico.

It's all fun and games and matching Ferraris until someone gets kidnapped.

These men just run in and we're down on the floor with AK -47s to our heads.

In the summer of 2005, Peter and Jay Flores, two of the biggest drug

in Chicago history, are feeling the heat.

Our husbands ended up being fugitives of the United States.

They were wanted on a drug conspiracy case, and so they decided to move to

Mexico just to avoid going to prison.

Peter and Jay take flight to their father's village near Guadalajara with

and Olivia in tow.

For these American kids from the streets of Chicago, Mexico is a whole new

world. And for Olivia, it seemed like a new lease on life.

I honestly thought that maybe this was going to be a change of life.

I just saw the good in Jay and Pete, and I really wanted them to just get out of

the drug trade.

So when we moved to Mexico, I felt like this was a way out.

And instead, in reality, they ended up just getting sucked deeper into that

world. Operating from Guadalajara, Peter and Jay soon find themselves working

even more closely with El Chapo and his partners, an affiliated cartel known as

the Beltran Labor Organization, trafficking tons and tons of cocaine

.S. In Mexico, Jay was responsible to negotiate the different contracts with

Sinaloa Cartel or the Beltran Labor Organization.

They were able to get the drugs on consignment that they would bring up to

United States, whether it was through the bus transportation, whether it was

through rail cars, whether it was through tunnels, whether it was on narco

submarines. Once it made it up to the United States, then Peter would come in

and he would handle all of the routes coming from L .A. to all the cities out

east. I mean, they had 200 workers in different cities, and so he had to

micromanage them and make sure that there was no mistakes, that there was no

risk being taken just because it could cost them their lives.

While in Mexico, the twins and their families live a lavish cartel lifestyle

with luxury penthouse condos, Caribbean vacations, and more cash than they could

ever spend.

We were living every drug dealer's dream.

Our husbands were making millions and millions of dollars. We're talking

James money.

They made $10 million a month in profit.

So we lived a very lavish lifestyle. The narco culture is very different from

the U .S. We were able to live out loud.

Our husbands had a warehouse just full of foreign cars.

We had a ranch with dancing horses, monkeys, tigers.

I mean, we just lived that lifestyle that you see on Instagram.

The freedom to spend money frivolously is nice, but the Flores family begins to

see the real and steadily rising cost of doing business with gangsters and

crooked Mexican cops.

Along with that lifestyle brings a lot of heartache as well.

And the more money they made, the more problems they had.

Every good moment in our family was always overshadowed by a bad moment.

And eventually, we were all kidnapped altogether.

Things get all too real when a Mexican federali recognizes Peter as a wanted

American fugitive.

When the twins fail to meet the officer's growing demands for bribes to

the country, federali snatch the whole family from their seats in a busy

nightclub. All of a sudden, these men just run in with black ski masks and AK

-47s, and we're down on the floor with AK -47s in our heads.

The Flores family is hustled off to a police station, where the crooked

threatens them with imminent extradition to the United States. That is, until

the kidnapper cops get straightened out by the real authority.

All of a sudden, the phone rings and they received a call from Chapo Guzman.

In that call, he is like changed his whole demeanor. And he's like, si,

yes, whatever you say.

And when he hung up the phone, the Mexican federal agent knew that they

go up against the cartel. And at that point, I knew how important our husbands

were to the Sinaloa cartel and the Beltran labor organization.

They were making them so much money that the cartel was not going to allow them

to just walk away.

But by 2008, the twins have actually become too valuable for their own good.

And when the Sinaloa cartel and the Beltran Leyva organization suddenly part

ways, the warring drug lords would rather kill them than share them.

63 people have been killed on the Mexican side this year as drug gangs

control of key smuggling routes into the U .S.

Guadalajara became a bloodbath.

And all of a sudden they were caught in the middle of this terrible violence.

They were given an ultimatum, and that was to choose which side they were going

to be on.

And at that point, you know, they said, we're not going to be able to choose.

This is not our war to fight.

They got themselves in a bind.

If they bought from Beltran Leyva, Chapo would kill them and kill their families

and everybody they know in Mexico. And the opposite would be true if Beltran

Leyva knew that they were buying from Chapo. So really, they were caught.

So they started feeling the heat in their own backyard.

They knew the dynamics of the cartels and the violence, and they knew that

were pressing their luck by staying there.

And the only way for them to be free of that was coming back to the U .S.

In October 2008, the twins' lawyer reaches out to the DEA and the U .S.

Attorney's offices in Chicago, asking to make a deal.

The thing that was most valuable to us were recordings that led directly to

seizures. And so we wanted to basically just turn them into microphones with

legs. and be able to marry up those recordings with direct seizures of drugs

money. An undercover agent posing as a twins' associate takes possession of two

shipments of heroin coming to Chicago from Sinaloa.

From there, the brothers set up a ruse to get El Chapo himself on the phone.

The twins decided to pretend.

that the quality of one of those shipments was poor and the quality of

shipment was good.

In reality, that was a lie. The quality was exactly the same for both loads. But

that was the ruse that the twins used to get Chapo on the phone so they could

talk about this disparity in quality and negotiate a discount in the price.

Peter Flores is able to get El Chapo on secret recordings, directly haggling

over the price of their heroin deal.

Pete was able to extract from Chapo the fact that the heroin, in fact, did come

directly from him, that there was a negotiated price of $55 ,000 per kilo,

Pete used this ruse of the quality disparity to ask Chapo for a discount of

,000 per kilo.

Chapo may be a ruthless drug lord, but he also appears to have a soft spot for

his biggest customers.

He agrees to grant his American protégés a discount on the merchandise.

For the first time ever, the U .S. government has indisputable evidence.

linking the biggest, most insulated drug kingpin in the world to an actual

crime. The recording was immensely powerful evidence to have Chapo in a

unguarded setting where he was just himself.

They talked very openly about the fact that this heroin shipment existed, that

there was a conspiratorial agreement as to the price, and he was very, very

successful in extracting everything that we needed.

for a nice self -contained prosecution of Chapo. The twins' cooperation is a

for the feds, but for the newly pregnant Flores' wives, it's a terrifying

reality. During our husband's cooperation while we were living in

really, really difficult for us. Olivia and I were both pregnant. We still had

our husband's associates by our house every day.

You know, the Sinaloa cartel is one of the biggest, most violent organizations

in the world.

We didn't think our family was going to make it out of there alive.

Next on American Greed.

It's crystal clear what would happen to you and your family if you didn't do

what he wanted. The Flores brothers find out the price of betraying El Chapo

when their father is kidnapped.

And there was a note that read, tell those two.

Just stop talking or we'll send you his head.

In November 2008, twin brothers Peter and Jay Flores, arguably the richest

American drug traffickers in history, won out of the drug business and out of

Mexico, where they've been living as fugitives from federal U .S. drug

When they decided to cooperate, our husbands were given up the only life

ever known. It was very scary.

I didn't understand how they were going to pull this off while we're living in

Mexico.

In cooperation with the U .S. government, they secretly record calls

drug supplier and leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Chapo Guzman.

El Chapo had always been very careful.

But he trusted the twins so much.

And they made so much money for the Sinaloa cartel.

So they were the only ones that were able to get El Chapo on tape

for the DEA.

In November 2008, the brothers self -surrendered to the U .S. Marshals in

Guadalajara and are flown back to the States.

This puts their father in a bad place.

He's old school and not willing to play ball with U .S. authorities.

Our father -in -law, he, you know, was very upset with his sons for deciding to

cooperate. He was upset that his sons became

ratas.

Rats. Their last memory that they have of their father was him calling them

cowards because he didn't believe.

And anyone cooperating like he taught them, that was probably the worst thing

you could possibly ever do.

Shortly after their return to the States, Peter and Jay may have reason to

believe that the man who gave them life has paid for their decision with his

own. He was kidnapped in an area in Mexico that he used to frequent.

And there was a note that was left on his car that in Spanish read,

tell those two to stop talking or we'll send you his head.

He disappears and is presumed to have been murdered.

It almost seems like he knew what was going to happen, and I feel like maybe

felt that he needed to pay for their decision and what they did because he

so against it.

Back in Chicago, the Flores twins sit down with federal investigators and give

up everything they know about the Sinaloa cartel.

and their own enterprise in the United States.

The bread and butter for the Sinaloa cartel was the use of hidden

and tractor trailers that drove right through legal ports of entry.

The twins then had a vast network of houses, warehouses, safe houses, all

throughout Chicago and the Chicago suburbs.

The twins broke down every single moving part of that apparatus, where these

warehouses were, who the truck drivers were, who the supervisors of those truck

drivers were.

They rented homes in high -class neighborhoods, something nobody would

that a million -dollar condo was where they were counting drug money.

Once the drugs are transported by organizational members, they're turned

street gangs. Street gangs put those drugs on the street. They take the

proceeds. They would give the proceeds back.

And it's going back to Mexico the same way the drugs are coming out, in the

of a car, an 18 -wheeler, a bus.

And I think that was even harder than moving the drugs just because, you know,

we're talking street money. We're talking 20s and 10s and 5s. I mean,

times that they would have to fill up, you know, shipping containers just full

of money.

There was just no limit to how they could bring in the drugs and send back

the cash.

The government alleges that during three years of working with Chapo, the Flores

twins moved nearly $2 billion in cash from the U .S. to Mexico.

The twins' cooperation resulted in an unprecedented judicial case for the

federal government.

The Northern District of Illinois indictment joined six other U .S.

with their own charges against El Chapo, ranging from cocaine and heroin

smuggling... to racketeering, organized crime and murder.

The U .S. government wants him extradited, but getting him on American

be more difficult than they could ever imagine.

Next on American Greed, catching the world's most wanted criminal is one

keeping him quite another.

The day he escaped, and I couldn't believe it. How in God's name could this

happen?

On a winter's day in Chicago, Peter and Jay Flores finally face a reckoning for

their life in the drug trade.

In other circumstances, their crimes might have earned them a life sentence.

But their cooperation in the case against El Chapo is vital and advised

reduced term of 14 years.

When our husbands received a 14 -year sentence, it was a hard pill to swallow.

But I did understand that for the crimes that they committed, they would have

been sitting in life in prison.

It was very, very difficult for Olivia and I to acclimate to a new kind of

living as well.

We had to live on our own with our newborn babies and just try to figure

to live life without our husbands.

The final act of cooperation for the Flores twins, testifying against their

former drug boss, will come only when El Chapo is captured.

And that won't be easy. Here in the mountains of Sinaloa, federal agents are

hunting something more than a man.

They're hunting a legend.

El Chapo was the Mexican Robin Hood.

He was adored, idolized. Kids wanted to be him. Kids wanted to work for him.

For 13 years, the elusive outlaw has found cover in these mountains.

His power and protection deeply rooted in the region's rocky soil and rugged

people. The area is very impoverished. There's really no opportunity, there's

jobs, no economy, except the drug economy, unfortunately.

That's why most people go into either growing poppy or marijuana, because the

land lends itself to that, and the people know that this is one way that

can basically put food on their tables.

He really owned everybody around it. And that was his alarm bell.

Everybody at some point had allegiance to Chapo or Sinaloa. And because of

he was able to stay a couple steps ahead of the law.

In a bygone era, the so -called Mexican Robin Hood might have remained secluded

in his Sherwood forest forever.

But in the digital world, Chapo must rely on encryptive servers and

messaging to hide his communications.

When federal investigators finally hacked the system, Chapo's days in

numbered. Because the cartels believed that these communication platforms were

secure, in a lot of ways they let their guard down and shared information that

allowed U .S. law enforcement to learn of their whereabouts.

On February 22, 2014,

El Chapo's BlackBerry signal is coming from the resort town of Mazatlan and a

condo building.

called the Hotel Miramar.

Mexico sends in their elite force, the Mexican Marines, to storm the room where

they find Guzman, his wife, and twin daughters.

The drug lord runs into the bathroom, then quietly surrenders.

Chapo is taken here, to Altiplano, to await trial. It's Mexico's maximum

security prison.

But U .S. authorities are feeling uneasy about the prison's ability to contain

the legendary smuggler.

After all, he's already escaped from prison once before.

Myself and a couple other guys flew down and we met with the head of the federal

police and I told him point blank, this guy's going to tunnel out.

You have to pay attention to this.

You're going to have to move him. You've got to keep him on the move.

And he essentially said.

See you later, gringo. Tonight, an international manhunt is underway from

Joaquin Guzman, nicknamed El Chapo. And for the second time, he just staged a

spectacular escape from prison.

Authority say Guzman was last seen on a security camera around 9 p .m., entering

a shower area in his cell at the high -security Altiplano Prison near Mexico

City. The day he escaped, I'll never forget, I got the call at 3 in the

and I couldn't believe it. How in God's name could this happen? From there, they

say, he slipped out of camera range through a 20 -by -20 -inch hole, climbed

about 10 yards down a ladder, then entered an elaborate tunnel.

That tunnel stretched for about a mile. It surfaced in a half -built house in a

farm field.

We couldn't get enough of it. We couldn't get enough of El Chapo escaping

prison. the way he did.

That he can manage even maximum security prison and just laugh out loud at

everybody and say, you know, sayonara.

I got my own little tunnel and I'm out of here.

What's clear when you watch that video is that the corruption was just

completely endemic. It was everywhere.

I mean, it was abundantly clear that the prison officials absolutely knew it was

broadcast all over the world, and it really did just show that he was

untouchable. This time, Mexican officials are embarrassed all the way to

highest levels of government, and they vow to capture El Chapo once and for

Next on American Greed, Chapo's going down, but the twins see light at the end

of the tunnel.

It was absolutely like... The best day of our lives.

Six months after Chapo Guzman's brazen escape from prison, Mexican and U .S.

agents are closing in on the fugitive.

Tracking Chapo and his closest associates to a town called Los Moquis

condo complex.

where they suspect he might be hiding.

And they watched this particular condominium be fortified, steel door,

going in and out, and they stayed on it.

For 60 days, no sign of Chapo.

Then one night, the kingpin feels driven to leave the security of his hideout to

run a couple of important errands.

They went out for tacos and porn movies, which, hey, there you go, that did him

in. I think he eventually felt so comfortable, so untouchable, that he

leave the mountaintop and go and venture into populated areas because he was so

insulated. And it turned out it was his biggest mistake.

Captured on helmet cam video, the Marines force their way through the

into the safe house.

A shootout ensues.

A chapo's gone.

Again, he escaped through the tunnel with his chief of security, but

he came up through a sewer, carjacked the car, and the car broke down.

And that was enough for the Marines to catch him. This time, Mexican

are not taking any chances.

This time, they quickly agreed to extradite him to the United States.

They knew the corruption in Mexico was so deep, the only jail...

The Chapo could not escape from the U .S. jail.

The long -awaited trial of El Chapo Guzman tops news feeds around the world.

Inside the courtroom, the U .S. Attorney's Office brings a case spanning

years of alleged criminal activities, including drug trafficking, firearms

charges. and conspiracy to commit murder.

The evidence at trial that we introduced, I think, makes clear that

was no well -meaning Robin Hood. They are a criminal enterprise.

They are a hyper -violent drug gang.

The prosecution lays out an overwhelming barrage of evidence charging that

Joaquin Guzman is the top boss of the Sinaloa cartel.

Chapo's defense, however, maintains that while he may have dabbled in the drug

trade, he is no kingpin.

Our position is that Joaquin was not the leader. He had been involved in some

activities back in the 80s and that he had seized that activity back in about

1985. But Chapo's defense is undermined by the government's roster of 14

cooperating witnesses, all of whom once had close ties to the kingpin.

including Chicago twin Peter Flores, who comes face to face with his former drug

boss. You can tell El Chapo was surprised, particularly for some people,

that he thought they were close to him. It's like if you trust in your almost

son and then your son is testifying against you. That happened with the

brothers. So there was a lot of people that he felt betrayed by.

So during his testimony, we put into evidence one of the recorded

between Flores and Chapo in which they're discussing sending heroin to the

Because Chapo believed that these communications were completely private,

spoke openly.

They were really valuable pieces of evidence because it corroborated what

our cooperators were saying, which is that Chapo was commanding people out in

the field to do various things, to send drugs to the U .S. And so it really

showed that he was the chief. He was the one at the top.

He was the leader.

On February 12, 2019, the federal jury sides with the prosecution.

Joaquin Guzman Loera is convicted on all but one minor count.

The verdict brings a sentence of life in prison plus 30 years.

In December 2020, Peter and Jay Flores, the Chicago twins who helped put Chapo

away, are released from federal prison after serving 12 years of their 14 -year

sentence.

It was absolutely like the best day of our lives. I knew that everything, every

obstacle, every tragedy, and every...

painful moments that we've been through was all worth it. When we drove away, my

husband just like whispered to us and he just said, don't look back.

For El Chapo, there are no such happy endings and no more escapes.

The toppled kingpin will spend his remaining days here in 23 -7 solitary

confinement at the Supermax lockup in Florence, Colorado.

For the Department of Justice, the story does not end with the conviction of El

Chapo.

Charges continue to be brought against other members of the Sinaloa cartel,

including Chapo's wife, 31 -year -old Emma Coronel, arrested in February 2021

and charged with conspiracy to distribute illegal substances.

The investigation is ongoing, but El Chapo is not going anywhere.

He's sitting where he belongs right now as far as I'm concerned.

This guy is a generational bad guy.

i often think if you were to ask him he would probably rather have a rival put a

bullet in his head than to be sitting where he is now and that part makes me

feel good