El Chapo – the notorious drug lord who, in 2015, topped the list of the world’s most wanted men for the second time, managed to evade authorities for decades. Even when he was caught, dramatic escapes and the incomprehensible ability to keep his narcotics empire running while imprisoned allowed him to amass a net worth of at least $1 billion. But finally, a pair of captures spearheaded by the Mexican Navy seem to have finally imprisoned him for good. How did they manage to take him down? The answer goes back decades before they went down. Born either in 1954 or 1957 as Joaquin Guzman Loera, El Chapo rose to prominence as the founder of the Sinaloa Cartel. From 1989 onward, that cartel became one of the most powerful drug-trafficking rings in the world. Sadly, a life of crime seemed to be his destiny from the start. El Chapo’s early years were marred by poverty and the outburst of his abusive father, a man who himself was in the drug trade and would often take out his aggression on El Chapo and his mother. By the time he was in his teens, the boy who would become El Chapo had already been booted out of the family home and was left to fend for himself. He would soon follow in his father’s footsteps. Desperate for money, Guzman started selling marijuana on the streets of Mexico. Throughout the 1970s, he embarked on a slow rise that saw him go from street pusher to a key trafficker within his home district of Sinaloa. He wasn’t anywhere near being the kingpin he would become just yet. But by the time he reached his late 20s, El Chapo was working with a man who would prove the key in his later era of drug dominance. That man was Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. The founder of the Guadalajara Cartel, which trafficked cocaine into the United States and was generating an estimated $5 billion in Four years after Gallardo was sent down, El Chapo founded the Sinaloa Cartel, inheriting some of his boss’s old territory in the process. Creativity was the driving force behind El Chapo’s success. He found ever more inventive ways to smuggle cocaine into the United States, with the most impressive being a series of tunnels that ran underneath the border between Mexico and the United States. Those tunnels could be as deep as 70 feet underground and were often built tall and wide enough for an adult to walk or ride through them while carrying their shipment of drugs. For every one of those tunnels the DEA closed, El Chapo found another way to sneak his drugs into the U.S. Other novel methods ranged from the simple – such as putting the drugs in cans that were labeled as chili peppers – to the ingenious. One method saw El Chapo stash cocaine powder within fire extinguishers that were shipped from Mexico to the U.S. Given that dry powder fire extinguishers already contained a powder, it wasn’t much work for El Chapo and his crew to substitute that legitimate chemical compound with his drugs to get them past airport security. And El Chapo’s organization kept growing. By the 1990s, it was sending cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and methamphetamine to five continents, making it the largest international drug operation in the world. El Chapo also benefited from the fading of the Columbian cartels that had been so prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. As Cali and Medellin started to wane, El Chapo took on more territory. He also became more vicious. Within the Sinaloa Cartel, he began forming gangs. Los Texas, Los Lobos, Los Negros, Los Chachos, and several more all operated somewhat autonomously, though with the collective goal of growing the cartel boss’s empire. The men who joined these gangs have been accused of collectively committing over 1,000 murders in Mexico alone, likely with many more in other countries, alongside untold casualties caused by fighting with other cartels. This level of activity couldn’t go unnoticed for long. Despite his efforts to keep a low profile, El Chapo found himself on the radars of both the DEA and the FBI by the early 1990s. However, neither would be successful in capturing the drug lord. Instead, El Chapo was first captured in 1993 by the Guatemalan army while relaxing at a hotel in Tapachula, Guatemala. He was handed over to Mexican authorities two days later and sent back to his home country for trial. He was initially imprisoned at the Federal Social Readaptation Center No. 1 – also known as La Palma – with his trial seeing the drug lord receiving Mexico’s maximum prison sentence of 20 years and nine months for the crimes of drug trafficking, bribery, and criminal association. More convictions would follow. In 1995, El Chapo was transferred to the Federal Center for Social Rehabilitation 2, or Puente Grande, where he was convicted of several other crimes, including drug trafficking and possession of firearms. He was also tried for the murder of Cardinal Ocampo, though a judge dismissed that charge and El Chapo would serve no time for it. That should have been the end of his story, but it was just the beginning. El Chapo somehow kept finding ways to keep running his empire from behind bars. He was generous with his bribes to guards, through which he was able to arrange conjugal visits and meetings with cartel members to keep his operation running. That alone would have been embarrassing enough for Mexico were it not for another issue. Which is that El Chapo was becoming a legend in his own country. Many of the villagers in his home district of Sinaloa saw him as a Robin Hood-esque figure who had risen from poverty to become the most famous man the region had ever produced. It also can’t escape mention that El Chapo’s drug exploits poured money into Sinaloa. He gave jobs – however illegitimate – to hundreds of men, helping them climb out of the very poverty the drug lord had experienced himself. To them he wasn’t a crazed mass murderer, he was a legend. And that legend only grew when El Chapo carried out his first escape in 2001. The story goes that El Chapo bribed a host of prison guards and employees to enable his escape from Puente Grande. One of those guards was Francisco Camberos Rivera, also known as El Chito or “The Silent One.” He was responsible for opening El Chapo’s cell door and ushering him into a laundry cart. El Chito pushed El Chapo down the strangely unguarded hallways of the prison, coming to a set of electronic doors that had been opened by another guard. Those doors led into a parking lot, where El Chapo moved from the laundry cart into the trunk of a Chevrolet Monte Carlo before being driven away. There was just one guard on duty in the parking lot at the time. Though some dispute this account, it is certain that he received inside help. Following his escape, a federal investigation into Puente Grande led to the arrests of 71 of the prison’s employees, with the warden even falling under suspicion. El Chapo didn’t care. He was out and free to continue running his cartel from the outside. This period of freedom brought renewed violence to the Sinaloa region. According to Forbes, the annual tally of murders in the region was around 400 in 2007. Likely due to a need to reassert its dominance, El Chapo’s cartel started killing rivals and others. The murder rate rose to around 750 in 2008, just under 1,500 in 2009, and finally reached a peak of just under 2,500 by 2010. El Chapo was back, and his cartel was more dangerous than ever. Between 2001 and 2013, El Chapo increased his security enormously. He was shadowed by an entourage of armed guards at all times, practically being treated like a head of state during a visit to another country. He used part of his billion-dollar-plus fortune to buy bullet-proof vehicles, private airplanes, and even all-terrain vehicles he could use to conduct a quick escape if the authorities ever got too close. With all of this investment into his own security, El Chapo seemed confident in his ability to evade authorities. Eyewitness accounts even claimed that he would often walk into restaurants with his gunmen, ordering everybody to turn off their cell phones so he could enjoy a meal. He got away with it – and grew his legend – because he would then pay the tabs of everybody in the restaurant. But El Chapo was growing overconfident. By 2013, Mexico’s security forces were already working on another plan to capture him. That year saw them penetrate his inner circle, resulting in the arrests of several of his top lieutenants including Mario Nunez, a former Sinaloa cartel member believed to be complicit in at least 350 murders ordered by El Chapo. Combining these captures with information from wiretaps, tips from informants, and the occasional confession, Mexican authorities were slowly getting closer to figuring out the cartel boss’s whereabouts. In 2014, they finally had a location. But just sending law enforcement after him wouldn’t be enough. No, now it was time for the Mexican Navy to come into play. For the 13 years since El Chapo’s escape, he had become a top target for both Mexico and the United States, to the point where the U.S. was offering a $5 million reward for any information that led to his capture. Ultimately, it wouldn’t need to make a payout. On February 12, 2014, the Procuraduria General de la Republica, or PGR, captured a high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel chief named Daniel Fernandez Dominguez, also known as El Pelacas. El Pelacas didn’t talk. But that didn’t matter because he was carrying something that gave the Mexican navy all that they needed – 20 cell phones filled with contacts for the PGR to investigate. Many of the contacts had numbers that use the Sinaloa dialing code, with investigators quickly concluding that at least some of those contacts would be cartel associates of El Pelacas. More raids followed. A day after the capture of El Pelacas, the PGR, Mexican Federal Police, and the Mexican Navy jointly conducted a joint raid that led to the arrest of Joel Enrique Sandoval Romero, otherwise known as El 19. It was another huge capture as El 19 was believed to have murdered a security chief working for El Chapo's rival El Mayo. However, El 19 wouldn’t break. Instead, it was one of the four associates who were arrested alongside him that gave the Mexican authorities the information they needed: One of the cell phones they were carrying belonged to El Chapo. More traces followed. On February 16, 2014, American authorities were able to use the data that Mexico’s authorities had gathered to track down El Condor. Real name Carlos Manuel Hoo Ramirez, El Condor was El Chapo’s chief of communications, and through him came more information. The U.S. and Mexico discovered the names of other facilitators in the Sinaloa Cartel, along with a stash house located in Mexico. But the biggest discovery was that of the phone number of Mario Hidalgo Arguello – a bodyguard and personal assistant to El Chapo who went by the alias El Nariz and was a key part of the drug lord’s inner circle. Mexico finally had the man it needed to lead them to El Chapo. Just hours after tracing El Nariz’s location, authorities swooped on his home in Culiacan. He was arrested on his doorstep after returning from picking up dinner for El Chapo at a local restaurant, after which he was quickly taken into custody. El Nariz broke. He told the authorities everything that he knew, including information about El Chapo’s whereabouts in Culiacan and several addresses where the cartel boss may be. All of that information was passed to the Mexican Navy, which tasked its Marines with conducting the raids that would bring El Chapo to justice. The first of those raids took place on February 17, 2014. Mexico’s finest raided a property in the Colinas de San Miguel neighborhood that belonged to El Chapo’s ex-wife. They didn’t find their target, though they destroyed several of the drug kingpin’s belongings during the raid. But they weren’t too worried. El Nariz had already told them that El Chapo rarely spent more than a day at a single address, and they had several more on their list to investigate. Still, it seemed like the Mexican Navy wouldn’t need all of those addresses because El Chapo had made a critical mistake just before dawn on the day they raised his ex-wife’s home. He'd turned on his cell phone. El Chapo had made a brief but desperate call to someone he hoped would help him get out of Culiacan before the Mexican Navy descended upon him. That call was tracked and led the Mexican Navy to a house in Libertad. But there was a problem – the door wouldn’t budge no matter how much the Navy pounded on it. Later, it was found that the door was not only reinforced using steel but that it had been custom-made to have water on the inside, which would prevent the door from breaking down due to the Mexican heat. It took the Navy 10 minutes to finally break it down, after which they entered only to find there was nobody there. But there was a clue – a bathtub that had been raised using hydraulic lifts. Under that tub lay stairs into a hidden underground passage. The Mexican Navy had missed El Chapo by mere minutes. The Marines sent to storm the building quickly started making their way through the hidden tunnel, only to find that it opened up into the Culican sewer system. Above ground, troops flooded into the streets to block exits out of the region and prevent El Chapo from escaping on foot. A U.S. drone was also deployed, which started scanning manholes so it could alert the Navy if El Chapo emerged from any of them. In the sewers, the Navy discovered a tactical vest on one of the many paths they could take, following it until they reached a storm drain that let out into a river one mile away from the house they’d raided. The Navy had lost the trail and El Chapo had escaped once again. Still, the net was closing around the drug lord. Soon after the failed raid, Mexican authorities captured El Picudo, also known as Mario Lopez Osorio. El Picudo detailed how El Chapo made his escape – he’d exited the storm drain the Navy discovered and was picked up in a vehicle by El Picudo. Aides met them driving south out of Culiacan, where El Chapo switched vehicles before being transported to another location. For a moment, it would have felt like El Chapo was out of the Navy’s grasp were it not for one key detail. He’d been accompanied during his escape by a bodyguard named Hoo Ramirez. Another raid followed, this time on Ramirez’s home, but it came up empty. But then, another fortunate breakthrough. On February 20, 2014, Ramirez turned on his BlackBerry cellphone to send a text to a fellow cartel member. Mexican authorities caught and tracked the signal, which led them to the Sinaloa resort of Mazatlan. The Mexican Marines believed they may have missed their chance, thinking that El Chapo had already escaped to Sierra Madre in all of the confusion. Still, they decided to conduct a raid on the hotel to which the signal led them anyway. If nothing else, they might capture Hoo Ramirez and get one step closer to El Chapo. They’d ended up getting a lot more than a bodyguard. As evening drew close on February 21, 2014, 40 members of the Mexican Navy converged on Mazatlan. They weren’t alone. American agents from the U.S. Marshal Service, Department of Homeland Security, and DEA linked up with the Marines, with all working together to pinpoint Ramirez’s location: The Hotel Miramar. The problem was that the hotel was a 12-story building containing dozens of rooms in which Ramirez – and possibly El Chapo – might be hiding. Knowing these variables could lead to another escape if they weren’t careful, the Marines descended on the building on February 22, cordoning it off before entering to quiz the staff. There, they discovered that two rooms had been rented out the previous day. One of those rooms had to contain Ramirez. The Marines divided into two teams, with one making its way to the sixth floor of the hotel to storm one of the two rooms. No Ramirez. Just a pair of American tourists who awoke to the sounds and sights of half a dozen soldiers. At the same time, another team of six Marines made their way to the fourth floor and Apartment 401. Jackpot. Ramirez was standing outside the door armed with an AK-47 rifle. There was no dramatic shootout, as Ramirez surrendered his weapon without a fight. But wait a second. If Ramirez was standing outside the door, that would suggest somebody was with him. Was El Chapo in the apartment? The Marines stormed the room, discovering El Chapo’s personal chef and babysitter in one of the bedrooms, along with his two children Maria and Mali. In the other bedroom was the target they had spent so long – and so many failed operations – trying to catch. El Chapo was in the room with his wife, with both surrendering without the Navy having to fire a shot. Within three minutes of the raid beginning, El Chapo was under arrest. The Mexican Navy had its man. By the time of El Chapo’s dramatic arrest, the Sinaloa Cartel was believed to be operating in 50 countries. The American Attorney General Eric Holder hailed his capture as a “landmark achievement,” noting that El Chapo’s criminal activities had affected the lives of millions of people around the world not only due to drug addiction but the violence and corruption that allowed his cartel to prosper. El Chapo was sent to Altiplano prison. There he would await a trial that would likely sentence him to spend the rest of his life in prison. However, the elusive escape artist had one more trick up his sleeve. He knew the prison – which was 55 miles west of Mexico City, was vulnerable. And besides, he’d escaped from a high-security facility before. As Mexico’s Navy – along with most major American law enforcement bureaus – celebrated El Chapo’s arrest, the crime lord was plotting another daring escape. That escape would take place on July 11, 2015. At 8:52 pm on that day, an alert blared out at Altiplano prison. It had been roughly 50 minutes since prison guards had seen El Chapo. The last sighting was when the drug lord received his daily medicine before heading back to his cell, and he was no longer visible on the prison’s internal security cameras. Guards headed down to El Chapo’s cell only to find nothing. Nothing except a small opening in the shower area. Measuring about two square feet, the opening held a ladder made using PVC piping that was roughly the same size as El Chapo – five feet and six inches. The drug lord had climbed down the ladder into a tunnel that extended for about a mile underground. As investigators followed the trail, they discovered a motorbike – adapted to roll on rails – that they believe El Chapo’s henchmen had used to transport tools as they built the tunnel. The tunnel ended at a half-finished house in a construction site, a mile away from Altiplano. In that home, investigators found another tunnel that was roughly the same size as the one in El Chapo’s cell. Through that tunnel, the drug lord had once again escaped and was free to conduct his business once again. Another inquest was held, with 18 of the guards at Altiplano being quizzed to find out if they were culpable in the escape. A new manhunt was underway. This time, the Mexican Navy wouldn’t have to wait years to get their man. El Chapo managed to spend six months on the run before he was tracked to the northwestern city of Los Mochis thanks to a tip received from an anonymous civilian. Working in tandem with several U.S. agencies – just as they had when they captured the drug lord in Mazatlan – the Navy created a plan they dubbed “Operation Black Swan.” El Chapo would be captured – dead or alive. At 4:40 a.m. on January 8, 2016, 17 elite units of Mexico’s Marines converged on 1002 Jiquilpan Boulevard, the house in which El Chapo had been staying, according to the tip. They chose this time because they believed the drug lord would be sleeping, with his guards also likely to be tired after a long night of keeping watch. They wouldn’t be prepared for what was about to come. A signal is given, and the marines storm the house. They’re confronted by about a dozen cartel gunmen, collectively armed with 50-caliber machine guns and a grenade launcher. Those gunmen proved no match for the Marines. A firefight ensued, leaving five of the cartel members dead. Go Pro footage later released on the Mexican TV show Primero Noticias shows the Marines in action, moving from room to room and unleashing hails of bullets and grenades whenever they encountered a threat. Not all those the Marines encountered died at their hands. After clearing the downstairs portion of the house, the Marines moved upstairs and began clearing more rooms. They found two men in one of the rooms, with both being taken into custody. A sweep of the bathroom revealed two women lying on the floor. One of those women was the same chef who had been in the hotel with El Chapo when he was captured in 2014. Again, both were arrested. After about 15 minutes of fighting, the house was under the Marines’ control. After all was said and done, the Mexican Marines had also discovered a weapons cache containing a pair of M16 rifles with grenade launchers, a loaded rocket-propelled grenade launcher, and two Barrett M82 anti-material rifles. Fortunately for the Marines, El Chapo’s henchmen hadn’t been able to get to the cache before they were taken out. But there was a problem. They still hadn’t found El Chapo. With the fighting having died down, the Marines quickly deduced that El Chapo must have been hiding in the only bedroom found on the first floor. The only room the Marines hadn’t been able to enter as it had been barricaded. The Marines got to work, removing furniture and pounding away at the door – finding several hidden doors along the way – before they finally entered the room. They discovered El Chapo was still living in luxury even while on the run. The bedroom contained several bags from high-end clothing stores, bread, empty cookie wrappers, and a king-size bed. The Marines also found medicine, including antibiotics, cough syrup, and, strangely, injectable testosterone. Further investigation of the house discovered El Chapo had equipped it with flat-screen TVs and an internet connection. A DVD boxset of “Le Reina del Sur,” a Mexican telenovela, lay on the bed. That little detail is interesting because the star of that show – Kate del Castillo – had reportedly been in talks with El Chapo to take part in the creation of a film chronicling the drug lord’s life. But still, no El Chapo. Then, the breakthrough. The search of the bedroom revealed a mirror containing a light fixture. Within that fixture lay a handle that, once activated, opened a secret door in the bedroom that led down into yet another escape tunnel. El Chapo was once again prepared for the Marines, and had used the tunnels he favored so much when transporting drugs to evade them. Following the tunnels revealed that they led down into the Los Mochis sewer system. For a moment, all felt lost. After all, El Chapo had a 20-minute head start on the Marines, as they’d spent 15 minutes clearing the house and another five breaking into and searching the kingpin’s bedroom. El Chapo had escaped once again. But his glory would be short-lived. Surveillance footage showed El Chapo and one of his lieutenants emerging from a manhole nearby, from which they quickly stole two cars so they could flee. Those thefts would be their undoing, as one of the carjacking victims called the police, allowing Mexico’s Marines to track the car El Chapo used in his getaway. Reports vary on what happened next. ABC News, reporting on the account delivered by Primero Noticias, says that El Chapo and his lieutenant were stopped by the Mexican Federal Police on a highway as they attempted to escape the city. The four officers who made the arrest – about 12 miles outside of Los Mochis – were informed that 40 cartel assassins were on their way to free El Chapo. The drug lord had even attempted to bribe the officers with cash, homes, and jobs, only to tell them they “are all going to die” for their role in his arrest. The officers’ superiors told them to avoid the counterattack by taking El Chapo to the Dous motel, with the Mexican Navy arriving to take the 58-year-old drug lord to Los Mochis airport so he could be transferred to a holding facility in Mexico City. Time Magazine offers a different account. It claims that after the owner of the hijacked car contacted the police, the Mexican Marines tracked El Chapo to a nearby hotel. The drug lord must have felt like he’d escaped once again, only for the Marines to burst into his hotel room where they forced the filthy and exhausted cartel boss to surrender by gunpoint. Either way, El Chapo was once again in custody. This time, the Mexican and U.S. authorities decided that El Chapo needed to be incarcerated outside of his home country. He was expedited to the U.S. to stand trial. On July 17, 2019, he finally received his sentence – life in prison plus 30 years to run consecutively to the life sentence on charges that included 26 drug-related offenses and a murder conspiracy. El Chapo would also have to pay $12.6 billion in forfeiture, meaning every asset he owned would be seized while he served his time. El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel empire was shattered. The drug lord is now imprisoned at ADX Florence in Colorado. But his story hasn’t ended yet. To find out more about what has happened to El Chapo during his time in prison, check out this video or watch this instead!