'El Chapo' was captured in a bid for Hollywood stardom

It wasn’t exhaustive Mexican detective work, nor sophisticated U.S intelligence, that exposed the whereabouts of drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. It was ego and a chance at Hollywood.

Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez said Guzman, the billionaire fugitive captured Friday, had been in talks to produce a movie about his life.

“He established communication with actors and producers, which has formed a new line of investigation,” she said at a news conference as Guzman was being taken from Los Mochis, the seaside town in his native Sinaloa state where he was captured in a shootout with naval special forces.

Guzman was returned to the maximum-security prison from which he escaped six months ago through a tunnel dug beneath the facility and under the noses of his guards.

Gomez said authorities were also able to track Guzman’s meetings with lawyers and other associates and were close to capturing him in October. He had been seen from a helicopter, she said, but was accompanied by two women and a child, and so security forces decided not to engage him.

She gave new details about his escape in July, saying his brother-in-law, two pilots and tunnel engineers were involved. Once he made it through the tunnel, on a motorcycle speeding over specially built rails, he was whisked to an airfield where his airplane and a decoy took off in the night.

The United States congratulated Mexico for the arrest and is likely to seek Guzman’s extradition. He has been indicted in California, Illinois, New York and elsewhere, a sign of the broad expanse of his Sinaloa cartel’s traffic of cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamine.

However, he has previously fought extradition and was supported by Mexican courts.

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(Sanchez and Bonello are special correspondents. Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson reported from Washington.)

This story was originally published January 9, 2016 at 11:35 AM with the headline "'El Chapo' was captured in a bid for Hollywood stardom."