Looking for a new holiday house? The Mexican government announces that notorious drug lord, El Chapo’s house is up for grabs.
A national lottery in Mexico is offering one of Joaquin Guzman’s (El Chapo) old hideouts as a lottery prize to raise funds for Olympians, with tickets going for 250 pesos (about $17 Australian Dollars).
The low-key property was fled by Guzman in 2014, when Mexican Marines had the neighbourhood surrounded.
Using a series of tunnels – that were hidden by a bathtub – to escape, he fled completely naked with his mistress in tow. However, he was eventually caught at a condo on the coast in Mazatlán, on 22 February 2014.
The house was perfect for his needs, with a neighbour on one side and a storm sewer on the other. The bathroom tunnel connected to this sewer and essentially made Guzman’s escape possible.
After the marines ransacked the house during their search, it was abandoned for years. However, it has since been repaired and is ready to go back on the market.
The repairs included a fresh coat of white paint, the removal of surveillance cameras covering every angle of the exterior, as well as a concrete slab to cover El Chapo’s former escape route.
INDEP (Instituto para Devolver al Pueblo lo Robado or Institute to Return Stolen Goods to the People) has not referenced the houses history, listing it only as “Casa en Culiacán”.
The property is around 260 square metres, being valued by the government at $183,000.
Authorities tried to auction it off last year, starting the bidding at around $130,000 (£94,143) but there were no takers.
Me sealing the deal on the El Chapo safehouse https://t.co/zNcHKAxBJX pic.twitter.com/zUvohitOQ0
— definitely not Bentzburgh (@WrapGod_) September 14, 2021
Guzmán has a reputation for Hollywood-esque escapes. He slipped out of one of Mexico’s maximum-security prisons in 2001 in a laundry cart.
In July 2015, less than a year and half after his capture in Mazatlan, he slipped through a tunnel that was dug up to the drain in his cell’s shower.
On another occasion, he rode a motorcycle on tracks that were laid through a tunnel, to escape another maximum-security Mexican prison.
The Marines captured him again six months later in Sinaloa. He was then extradited to the US, where he was sentenced to life in prison in 2019.
While active, Guzmán was one of the worlds most powerful drug lords. He oversaw operations of mass cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, and heroin production, and smuggling, and distributing throughout the United States and Europe – the world’s largest users.
If you’d like to get to know El Chapo better, watch his Rolling Stone interview with Sean Penn below:
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