In 2006, Emma Coronel, age seventeen, entered a beauty pageant in her hometown in the northern Mexican state of Durango, and won. She was indeed beautiful, but it also helped that her boyfriend was the most powerful drug lord in history and was willing to pull strings in order for her to win. The following year, age eighteen, she was already married to Joaquin Guzmán Loera, aka El Chapo, who had had broken from prison 5 years prior and was one of the most wanted criminals in the world.
@emmacoronelaispuro_
Ten years later, the trial of the century is unfolding before us, putting any Narcos plot line to shame. One of the most outstanding revelations has James Bond meet Martin Scorsese and casting shade on the love story of Emma Coronel and el Chapo. Two witnesses portrayed el Chapo as an avid eavesdropper of his own wife and his mistress! Worse yet, the same IT expert in charge of his cartel’s cyber system was handing all of their texts over to the FBI. This is not how anyone would like to find out they have been cuckolded.
Guzman had hired Colombian IT expert, Cristian Rodríguez to install spyware software on phones he would hand out to his collaborators AND love interests where he could himself spy on those close to him, but especially the women he was involved with.
@donlegalYet, in a twist worthy of a spy movie, El Chapo would be go from spy to being spied on. In February 2010, Stephen Marston, an FBI agent posed as a Russian mobster to persuade Christian Rodriguez to build a cyber system for him, similar to the one he had built for El Chapo which encrypted his messages. Little did Rodriguez know he was about to be captured and offered two alternatives: jail time or working undercover for the United States. The jury did not know about this clandestine operation until the second week of 2019.
All of this meant the cartel’s phone calls and texts, including the ones sent to Emma Coronel and Agustina Cabanillas Acosta, his mistress, were available to El Chapo, Rodriguez, the IT guy-turned-double-agent, and, naturally, the FBI, who is now using the drug lord’s own paranoia against him. According to Rodriguez’s testimony, Guzman went as far as ordering him to install spy software on a woman’s computer, (perhaps his date?) who had casually brought it with her.
@courtroom_art
Many texts were later read out loud in the trial, when Coronel had to listen to what might have seemed like countless shows of affection through texts from her husband to another woman. In one of the texts, Guzmán asks for shampoo from his wife and talks about their daughter; in another one he writes to Agustina: “My love, you are the most important person to me. I love you”.
The texts also serve as evidence, as Guzmán broke rule number one and mixed business with pleasure. The texts clearly show how both of these women either knew of or actively participated in the drug dealing business. “You are being followed, honey. Just keep having a normal life. They just want to know if you come to where I am”, he warns his wife.
“How are the sales going?” says a text he sent to Cabanillas Acosta. “Oh, like busy bees. Nonstop, my love,” she answers.
With all of this damning evidence it seems like El Chapo’s womanizing days, among other things, are over.
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