After securing a guilty verdict against Joaquin Guzmán Loera, known as “El Chapo,” the legendary former head of the deadly Sinaloa cartel, federal prosecutors are now turning their sights to other alleged drug traffickers with ties to the cartel.    

After about five days of deliberations, a federal jury in Brooklyn on Tuesday found Guzmán guilty of all 10 counts against him, included engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, four counts of international cocaine distribution, related conspiracy counts and other charges.

Guzmán faces a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole on the top count in his indictment, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise. His sentencing is scheduled for June.  

Prosecutors say that, under El Chapo's rule, the Sinaloa cartel raked in $14 billion; moved massive amounts of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine into the United States; and left thousands dead.

Adding to the folklore that has surrounded Guzmán over the years was his daring prison escapes and ability to evade capture, such as the time in 2015 that, while being held in a maximum security prison in Mexico, he was able to escape through a tunnel that led up to the shower in his cell.

But U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue of the Eastern District of New York said while speaking to reporters Tuesday after the jury returned the verdict that the sentence will be one “from which there is no escape.”

Donoghue said that “endemic corruption” allowed the Sinaloa cartel to operate on such a massive scale—Alex Cifuentes Villa, who worked as one of Guzmán's lieutenants, testified that the cartel paid a $100 million bribe to former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

A conviction for Guzman does not spell the end of the Sinaloa cartel, drug enforcement officials told the Associated Press; it still has a narcotics distribution network that reaches across the globe and into U.S. cities.

But Donoghue said the trial, which included testimony from 14 cooperating witnesses, “pulled back the curtain” on international drug trafficking.  

“This is a day of reckoning, but there are more days of reckoning to come,” Donoghue said.

Days of reckoning could be coming for two other alleged drug traffickers that were swept up in indictments against Guzmán and other cartel members, both of whom are facing indictments in the Southern District of New York and are awaiting extradition to the United States.

They are Mykhaylo Koretskyy, a Ukrainian-born trafficker who is also known by the aliases “Russian Mike” and “Cobra” who is being held on Curacao; and Stephen Tello, who is also known as “Catboy” and who is being held in Canada.

Some of the evidence presented in the 12-week trial against Guzmán in the Eastern District of New York was drawn from the sprawling indictment filed in 2009 against him and some his henchmen in the Eastern District of New York and several other jurisdictions.  

Among them was Vicente Zambada Niebla, known as “El Vicentillo,” who pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy charges and testified against Guzmán last month during the trial. Zambada is scheduled to be sentenced in April in the Northern District of Illinois.

Jeffrey Lichtman, who was part of Guzmán's defense team in the Eastern District, said Guzmán is appealing the conviction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Additionally, Lichtman is representing Koretskyy and said he was doing so before he was hired onto Guzmán's defense team.

Lichtman said Koretskyy, who faces a charge of conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S. from 2008 to 2014, is not guilty of the charges. “We're looking forward to our day in court,” Lichtman said.

Barry Slotnick, a veteran defense attorney who is of counsel at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney and whose past clientele includes subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz, said defense attorneys in cases like Guzmán's would be aware it was likely that the defendant's reputation was known to jurors. But they also know that prosecutors must rely on the testimony of witnesses who either have or are alleged to have broken the law themselves.   

“You have to convince them that now, maybe for the first time in their lives, they're telling the truth,” Slotnick said of prosecutor's job.

But Slotnick said that with regard to the cases against the other Sinaloa-affiliated traffickers, the cases will likely depend on the same evidence used in the Guzmán's, and thus the trial transcript could be a benefit to defense attorneys, as it could be used to go after the government's witnesses on cross examination if they change their stories or make new admissions.