Sinaloa princes: El Chapo’s sons embrace the cartel

STORY: Once mocked by adversaries as entitled princelings, the four sons of jailed Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman have resuscitated a drug empire by embracing a new line of synthetic drugs.

The brothers are collectively known as Los Chapitos, or “the little Chapos,” – and their early bet on fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin, allegedly helped supercharge an opioid epidemic in the United States.

Not everyone believed Los Chapitos could take the reins of the Sinaloa drug cartel empire built by their notorious father.

Mike Vigil is the former Chief of International Operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration:

“Even though they were members of the Sinaloa Cartel, that were brought in by the father, the rest of the cartel had very doubtful respect for them because they look at them as spoiled brats who had never got their hands dirty like everybody else.”

The Guzman siblings were once only notable as minor social media celebrities who flaunted their wealth, and their futures were far from certain since their father's latest arrest.

But last month, U.S. authorities laid out extensive new charges against the brothers in indictments, and upped bounties for two of the siblings to $10 million apiece, cementing their status among the world’s most powerful and wanted drug lords.

The siblings deny any criminal involvement.

Los Chapitos, for the first time ever, released a public letter last week denying claims that they traffic fentanyl and rebutting allegations made by U.S. officials in a recent Washington press conference.

But law-enforcement sources say that after his father's arrest in 2016 and extradition in 2017, the youngest son, Ovidio Guzman became a high-level leader in the cartel.

And Mexican sources say the new generation has embraced violence as a means of control.

“The Chapitos have to maintain a reputation so they´re much more violent than their father was because they have to show other members of the cartel that they have a reputation where they´re going to take violent action if they have to. They´re not going to be, you know, 'wimps', and just go along with the flow.”

Mexico’s Army did ultimately apprehend Ovidio Guzmán earlier this year by sending hundreds of troops to raid one of his homes in rural Sinaloa. He’s now in a maximum-security lockup near Mexico City.

But the other brothers are still running a drug empire, according to U.S. officials. The cartel can turn $800 worth of precursor chemicals into fentanyl pills or powder that reap profits as high as $640,000, according to one of the April indictments.