As the top boss of the Mexican cartel Sinaloa, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán ran a drug-trafficking business despite being illiterate, having dropped out of school around the third grade.
Evidence presented in El Chapo’s trial, which ended in 2019 with his conviction and life sentence in the US without parole, showed that he often wrote messages to subordinates in broken Spanish.
So when a series of letters, handwritten in English and allegedly signed by El Chapo, recently began arriving at federal court in Brooklyn, NY, they created a mystery. Did El Chapo really write them? And if not, who was writing in his name?
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York received a letter, left, on June 23, 2026, allegedly signed by jailed Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. He sent the federal court in Brooklyn a handwritten message in Spanish, right, on July 15, 2025.
(Eastern District Court of New York)
More than 20 letters allegedly written by El Chapo have been found by the court, the first one dated April 10 and the latest one was filed on Tuesday in his docket in the Eastern District of New York.
They voiced a series of complaints about the injustice of El Chapo’s prosecution and called for his extradition to Mexico.
“I didn’t hurt anyone,” said one on April 25. “I was not known in my country for the bad things, the good things I did.”
The letters have sparked ridicule and outrage online, with Mexican citizens outraged that the notorious drug kingpin, who escaped prison twice in his home country, apparently has the gall to think he could be freed.
Some wondered if El Chapo had somehow managed to learn English in prison, or perhaps he was using public court documents to send coded messages that allowed him to continue firing on his gang.
The messages have a return address for ADX Florence, the maximum security state prison in Colorado where the king was once held in solitary confinement. His attorneys, however, note that the envelopes were postmarked in Jackson, Miss., not Colorado.
“It’s not him,” Mariel Colón Miró, a member of El Chapo’s defense team, told The Times. “We are investigating who sent them.”
Colón Miró insisted that he and other lawyers representing El Chapo were not involved in sending the messages.
“A crazy person,” she said.
A US law enforcement source familiar with the El Chapo case but not authorized to speak publicly called the letters “complete bulls—.”
“It’s not from him,” said the source. “Maybe someone is mentally ill.”
Although often gibberish and incoherent, the letters have taken the court’s time. Judge Brian Cogan, who presided over El Chapo’s trial, responded to the first five letters received by the court in a May 4 order denying their requests.
“Some of these documents are absurd and have no legal merit,” the judge wrote.
Still, the letters keep coming. One this month seems to offer a clue and, like the others, includes underlined words that appear to be random.
Posted on June 10, it said “the characters are there accepted of the courts mine legal request of Aubrey Gideon in Greenwood, MS 38930 his own rights as well as connection I have my lawyer to fight mine freedom in the USA”
Public records show Aubrey Gideon previously lived in Greenwood and was convicted of possession of cocaine in 2009. Messages sent to email addresses associated with Gideon were not returned, and several of his phone numbers were not working.
In December 2022, Gideon sent a letter to the Mississippi Supreme Court saying he was “suspended” from visiting the post office in Greenwood due to some sort of incident. Gideon asked the federal high court to intervene on his behalf.
The Mississippi letter mentions a local judge, Carlos Palmer, who told The Times that he did not remember what led to Gideon’s disappearance. Palmer said Gideon is a street performer in their town.
“Mr. Gideon walks downtown Greenwood every day,” Palmer said. “I don’t know what his condition is, he has been in court many times.”
El Chapo is unlikely to be able to communicate with Gideon – or anyone other than his lawyers and two young daughters, who are the only ones authorized to visit and speak with him under restrictions known as Special Administrative Measures.
In July 2024, El Chapo filed a civil rights lawsuit in Colorado state court seeking to lift these measures and improve the conditions of his detention.
“On a typical day,” one court filing said, El Chapo “would communicate with at least one person who spoke a language they could speak.”
El Chapo said he couldn’t get enough sleep and was experiencing “non-stop sinus, ear, nose and throat pain,” which he attributed to the heat of the air that is often blown into his cell.
“I have trouble sleeping because of being woken up many times throughout the night, every night by this hot wind,” he wrote.
He also told the court that he does not receive psychological counseling inside the prison. “I have no one to help me deal with the consequences and trauma of solitary confinement,” he wrote.
The judge dismissed the case on June 9.
The pro bono lawyer appointed by the court to represent El Chapo in this case, David Lane, said they plan to file a new complaint on his behalf. Lane argued that extreme segregation is unconstitutional, violating the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
“He hasn’t seen real sunlight or felt the sun on his skin in years,” Lane said. “He exercises outside the cage, but in the shade.”
According to Lane and the courts in the Eastern District of New York, at one point El Chapo was able to communicate with an inmate in a neighboring cell by shouting through the walls.
The inmate, identified in court as James “Jimmy” Sabatino – a Gambino crime partner who was sentenced to prison in 2017 for stealing millions of dollars worth of jewelry in a fraudulent scheme – wrote to a Brooklyn federal court in November of last year.
Sabatino described how he and El Chapo were housed next to each other in the ADX’s most secure area, an area he called “Suites.”
Sabatino wrote that, although he knew no English, Spanish and El Chapo, they were able to form a friendship. Sabatino said he saw the convicted drug lord’s “serious side” come out in difficult times, such as the death of El Chapo’s mother in 2023.
“I saw his mental health deteriorate rapidly, [and it] he has reached the point where I am afraid of him,” Sabatino wrote. “He has trouble speaking and putting his thoughts in a coherent way.”
In January, Sabatino sent a letter to the court asking to withdraw his request to be granted the status of “next friend”.
Lane said the two men have been separated by prison officials and are no longer in contact.
Meanwhile, another fan of El Chapo who writes letters does not give up on pushing the court to return him home. The latest message addressed the Mexican president, and noted that the imprisoned cartel leader did not attempt “any kind of escape. in the USA“
“Claudia Sheinbaum you have a a safe place mine arrest,” it said.
