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On a July afternoon in 2024, a private jet carrying three men from Mexico touched down at a small airport a few miles west of El Paso. Federal agents were waiting on the tarmac to greet them, handcuffs at the ready.
The first to disembark was Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of the infamous Sinaloa cartel leader “El Chapo.” Pudgy and dark-haired with a stubbly beard, he had just turned 38 and was wanted by U.S. authorities for working with his three brothers — known collectively as Los Chapitos — to smuggle tons of fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine.
Behind him was his septuagenarian godfather, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a longtime partner of El Chapo who co-founded the Sinaloa cartel and had a $15-million bounty on his head.
Although his passengers were among the world’s most notorious drug traffickers, the aviator who flew them across the border was almost a complete unknown — so much so that while the others were arrested immediately, he was allowed to walk free and return home to Mexico.
Since then, however, interviews and court documents reveal that he was a key member of the Chapitos organization — essentially the commander of the cartel’s air force. And he could soon play a role in bringing down other major cartel leaders.
The Times first identified the pilot in May as Mauro Alberto Núñez Ojeda, aka “Jando.” Now, information has emerged that paints a picture of him as a prolific smuggler, a dangerous henchman and a slippery figure who used a relative’s documents to mask his identity, allowing him to fly under the radar, literally and figuratively, for years.
The flight that brought Zambada and Guzmán López to the U.S. ultimately thrust him into the spotlight.
Guzmán López has admitted that he betrayed Zambada, the cartel’s elder statesman, by luring him to a meeting, ambushing him and forcing him onto the plane. By handing Zambada over to U.S. authorities while turning himself in, Guzmán López hoped to secure a deal that would allow him to avoid his father’s fate of serving life in a maximum-security prison.
Jando’s role in the abduction and the Sinaloa cartel was unclear until recent months.
According to U.S. court filings and sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, Jando, now 32, rose through the ranks of the Chapitos faction until he reported directly to Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, the ringleader of the cartel, who remains a fugitive in Mexico.
While he was no kingpin, one source said, Jando oozes charisma. There was a reason, they said, that he was trusted by El Chapo’s sons to execute some of the cartel’s most sensitive missions.
“He’s got like an aura,” the source said. “If he’d been born in the U.S. he’d be the CEO of a company or some wunderkind. It’s sort of unfortunate he was born in the milieu that he was. He’d be successful anywhere.”
The source said that when Jando was a teenager, he got his start as a low-level mule, hauling backpacks full of drugs on foot into the Arizona desert, then trekking back to Mexico, going undetected by the U.S. Border Patrol.
