Incredible but true in Mexico: a house where the drug lord El Chapo fled to win the lottery !

Eva Deschamps / July 6, 2021

The Mexican government will raffle off a house from which drug lord Joaquin Guzman, known as El Chapo who has since been sentenced to life in the United States, escaped in 2014.

The home, located in Culiacan, the capital of the northeastern state of Sinaloa, is valued at 3.6 million pesos ($184,000), according to the National Lottery's web page.

It is part of a package of prizes put into play on September 15 by the government for a total of $12.5 million.

On February 16, 2014, El Chapo had fled through an underground tunnel in the building. He was arrested six days later in the state of Sinaloa and sent to a high-security prison from which he escaped.

In 2016, he had been arrested again and extradited the following year to the United States where he was sentenced in July 2019 in New York to life in prison.

He is serving his sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado. He was for years considered the most powerful drug trafficker in the world.

The government of leftist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had already tried to auction his house and other assets seized from organized crime, but without success.

Lopez Obrador said at the time that the money collected would be spent on education and health.