Sean Penn interview helped catch notorious Mexican drug lord ‘El Chapo’

A poster with the face of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, reading “Wanted, Again”, is displayed at a newsstand in one Mexico City’s major bus terminals on July 13, 2015.

Sean Penn says El Chapo was inundated with offers from Hollywood, but ultimately entrusted Mexican actress Kate del Castillo to make a film about his life.

The astonishing story of actor Sean Penn’s encounter with the world’s most wanted criminal was published by Rolling Stone magazine the day after Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s arrest following a deadly military raid in Los Mochis.-AFP Photo.

In the article published Saturday, TMZ says that Mexico’s special agents got tipped off to El Chapo’s whereabouts after the cartel leader tried making a documentary about his life.

The meeting was made possible because Guzman struck up an unlikely friendship with Del Castillo, who herself played a Mexican drug queen in a well-known TV soap.

In the Rolling Stone article, the result of a seven-hour “sit-down”, Guzman said he was the world’s leading supplier of heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana. “I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats”, he told Penn in the exclusive interview.

Asked if he feels responsible for the high level of addictions in the world, he said: “It’s false”.

Authorities said the marines did not shoot Guzman during the raid because he was accompanied by two women and a girl, but that he hurt himself in a fall.

Former Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam had bragged earlier that Mexico wouldn’t extradite Guzman until he had served his sentences in Mexico.

Mexican officials said it was Penn’s interview that led them to Guzman.

“Never”, El Chapo said in the interview, adding that he thanked God for helping him to break out of prison past year. But they were able to track him to Los Mochis, Sinaloa, where he was captured.

The U.S. government has made two formal extradition requests for crimes including murder, money laundering, and arms possession.

Guzman, 58, was recaptured on Friday after months on the run.

Then Guzman escaped on July 11 under the noses of guards and prison officials at Mexico’s most secure lock-up, slipping out an elaborate tunnel that showed the depth of the country’s corruption while thoroughly embarrassing Pena Nieto’s administration.

After his capture on Friday, El Chapo glared when soldiers twisted his head towards TV cameras during a perp-walk in Mexico City.

The Mexican government plans to extradite El Chapo to the United States to face multiple charges of drug trafficking.

When Penn mentioned Trump, Guzman smiled and said, “Ah! It depends on a lot of people”, Guzman said. In 2014, Guzman escaped arrest by fleeing through a network of interconnected tunnels in the city’s drainage system in the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan. Mexico’s Attorney General says it was El Chapo’s hunger for more fame that tipped off authorities. “We have him. I want to inform the Mexicans Joaquin Guzman Loera [El Chapo] has been arrested”.