NEW YORK >> Former Mexican drug kingpin Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada admitted in a U.S. courtroom today to ordering murders and shipping millions of kilograms of cocaine during his decades-long leadership of the violent Sinaloa cartel.

Zambada, 75, faces a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment after pleading guilty in federal court in Brooklyn to charges that he engaged in a racketeering conspiracy and ran a continuing criminal enterprise that prosecutors said was responsible for flooding the U.S. with cocaine, heroin and fentanyl. Those charges stemmed from his decades-long role leading the Sinaloa cartel alongside imprisoned drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado.

Zambada agreed to plead guilty after the Justice Depart

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