This week, one of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords finally fell. Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, pleaded guilty in a New York courtroom to murder and fentanyl trafficking. At 77, he avoided the death penalty but still faces life in prison—and agreed to forfeit a staggering $15 billion in criminal profits.

That number caught the attention of Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who quickly announced she will ask Washington to redirect that money to Mexico’s poorest communities. “If the United States government were to recover resources, then we would be asking for them to be given to Mexico for the poorest people,” she said at her daily press briefing.

For decades, Zambada was a ghost—evading capture even as his partner, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, was sentenced to life in a U.S. prison. But his arrest in Texas last year, alongside one of El Chapo’s sons, revealed cracks inside the cartel. Fighting soon erupted between factions loyal to El Mayo and the “Chapitos”, Guzmán’s heirs, plunging parts of Mexico into chaos.

Despite the headlines, Mexican officials caution against assuming the cartel is finished. Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch stressed that while some wings have weakened, the Sinaloa cartel remains the world’s most powerful drug-trafficking organization, controlling routes, ports, and border operations.

The trial also exposed the cartel’s brutality: armies of hitmen, military-grade weapons, kidnappings, torture—and even reports of victims fed to tigers.

Still, Sheinbaum is trying to turn this historic forfeiture into a chance at justice. If the U.S. does share part of the $15 billion, it could mark a rare moment where money extracted from organized crime actually goes back into rebuilding the communities that suffered most from it.