Dámaso López Serrano, a Sinaloa Cartel boss accused in Mexico of being the mastermind behind the 2017 murder of journalist Javier Valdez and a cooperating witness for the U.S. government, was sentenced on Wednesday to five years in prison by a U.S. federal court on charges of drug trafficking.
López pleaded guilty in the Eastern District Court of Virginia nine months ago to conspiring to distribute 400 grams or more of fentanyl.
Once seen as a contender to lead the Sinaloa Cartel, López was arrested in December 2024 in Virginia, where he was under house arrest.
López Serrano, aka “El Mini Lic,” is the son of Dámaso López Núñez, alias “El Licenciado,” the former right-hand man of Sinaloa Cartel founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Both “El Licenciado” and El Chapo are serving life sentences in U.S. prisons.
López Serrano’s story has taken several dramatic turns in the past decade.
After the 2016 capture of El Chapo, a confrontation broke out between Guzmán’s sons and López Serrano for control of the Sinaloa Cartel, a battle that turned violent.
“El Mini Lic” voluntarily surrendered to U.S. authorities in the border city of Calexico, California, in July 2017, after another of the Sinaloa Cartel’s long-time leaders, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, reportedly ordered a hit on him. In January 2018, López pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to distribute controlled substances for the purpose of unlawful importation.”
During the 2018-2019 trial of El Chapo, “El Mini Lic” was one of the witnesses used by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
In 2022, López Serrano was set to be sentenced to six years for trafficking cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin, but pleaded for leniency, declaring that he wanted to be “a different person than he was and start a new life.”
The judge sentenced him to “time already served,” releasing him under the terms of five years of supervised probation, although the U.S. Department of Justice said it was still prosecuting him for other crimes.
By then, Mexican authorities had directly identified López Serrano as the mastermind of Valdez’s murder, issuing an arrest warrant against him in January 2020.
Then came his arrest in 2024, the result of an FBI sting operation, and Mexico announced it would seek his extradition.
Griselda Triana — Valdez’s widow — criticized Judge Anthony Trenga’s sentencing decision in a Facebook post, saying the five-year sentence was nothing for the man who ordered the assassination of her husband.
“What are five more years to this murderer? Nothing, because at any moment he will negotiate his early release for good behavior as he did once before,” Triana said.
With reports from El País, N+, La Jornada, The Washington Post, InSight Crime and Latinus
