Contact With Hollywood Producer May Have Helped Snare Chapo Guzman

Jan. 9, 2016, 9:46 PM UTC / Updated Jan. 10, 2016, 1:30 AM UTC

By Richard Esposito

In a twist worthy of the silver screen, information from Hollywood producers may have helped lead to the recapture of the world’s most powerful drug lord, Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, who escaped from a Mexican prison in July.

NBC News has learned from multiple U.S. sources that Hollywood producers seeking to turn the Sinaloa cartel chieftain’s life story into a movie notified U.S. officials that they were working on the biopic and were headed to Mexico for research.

According to multiple officials, several production companies contacted the Justice Department to express an interest in producing a film. At least one of those companies — and a well-known actor — were in contact with associates of El Chapo.

At least one source says the information gleaned through the Hollywood contacts may have helped lead to Guzman’s recapture.

Other sources say it is unclear just how much help, if any, the information may have been.

Guzman escaped from a Mexican prison in July through an elaborate tunnel but was recaptured Friday.

During a press conference after his capture, Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez Gonzalez said that an "important element in determining Chapo's whereabouts was finding out that he wanted to film an autobiographical film."

Image: Joaquin El Chapo Guzman — Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted by soldiers and marines to a waiting helicopter at a federal hangar in Mexico City, late on Jan. 8, 2016.Rebecca Blackwell / AP

The attorney general said Guzman had "made contact with actresses and producers."

Mexican officials allegedly documented meetings between Guzman’s lawyers and the actors and producers.

One U.S. official said that information from Hollywood sources was only one part of a two-year hunt by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division and other federal law enforcement, assisting the Mexican government, that included informants, satellite imagery and intercepted cellphone communications.

Guzman escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001 and was free until he was rearrested by Mexican authorities in February 2014, using intelligence from U.S. sources. He was imprisoned until he escaped once again in July 2015.

Richard Esposito

Richard Esposito is the senior executive producer of the NBC News Investigative Unit, and supervises investigative correspondents, producers, and reporters across all broadcasts and platforms of the NBCUniversal News Group.

Esposito, who began as a copy boy at the New York Daily News in 1977, has more than 25 years of newspaper and television experience. He has overseen investigations and run the metropolitan news operations at two of the largest newspapers in America, the New York Daily News and Newsday, and was most recently senior investigative reporter for ABC News.

He has shared in Peabody and Pulitzer awards, and has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer. Honors include the 2012 Murrow Award for his work in reporting the death of Osama bin Laden, a 2005 Polk Award for his investigation into the CIA’s network of secret prisons and harsh interrogation techniques, a 2006 Emmy Award and a 1990 Sigma Delta Chi award, among many other awards.

Esposito is the co-author of the books “Bomb Squad: A Year Inside the Nation’s Most Exclusive Police Unit,” and “Dead on Delivery: Inside the Drug Wars.”