70-year-old man and pilot involved in El Chapo’s tunnel escape are sentenced to prison

After Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán escaped from a maximum-security prison 2015, the Mexican government took legal action against 10 people, including Calixto Estrada , the man who sold the land where El Chapo’s team built the infamous tunnel .

Calixto was charged with fraud and sentenced to 1 year and 8 months in prison and fined with MXN 5,735.52.

Besides selling the property where the criminals built the tunnel, he also forged a contract to avoid paying MXN 75,000 in taxes .

In May 2014, Calixto and his wife visited a notary to sign a sales contract with Francisco Ramírez León regarding the property located in Ranchería de Santa Juana, Almoloya de Juárez , in the State of Mexico.

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This was the same property where El Chapo’s men built a tunnel that was connected to his cell and through which he escaped from prison in July 2015.

Once Calixto was informed that he had to pay taxes ad other expenses and that they could not be paid in cash, as Francisco Ramírez León wanted, he agreed to participate in a fraud .

Calixto signed a contract date on April 7, 2002, and Ramírez León’s lawyer took legal action so that the property title was transferred to him; this way, he wouldn’t have to pay taxes.

Th trial ended on May 18, 2015 and Francisco Ramírez León became the property owner just two months before " El Chapo" Guzmán scaped from prison.

Now, five years after the incident, a federal judge said Calixto could have prevented the former Sinaloa Cartel leader from escaping from prison but after considering his age and economic situation, the judge released the 70-year-old man on bail.

The same judge acquitted Celina Oseguera , the former federal prisonS director, and sentenced pilot Romano Lanciani Llanes to seven years in prison.

According to legal documents, the pilot worked for the Sinaloa Cartel . While Héctor Ramón Takashima Valenzuela , aka “El Chachimba ,” flew Joaquín Guzmán Loera and Édgar Coronel Aispuro to Sinaloa, Lanciani was ordered to take off minutes after Takashima to distract the authorities.

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