The world’s most notorious and powerful drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, has reportedly been captured in Mexico.

According to the Associated Press, Chapo or “Shorty,” the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, was captured last night at a hotel in the resort town of Mazatlan. The operation to grab the kingpin was a joint operation between U.S. and Mexican authorities. According to reports, Guzman was attending a party when he was apprehended, and there were no shots fired during the operation. A picture of a shirtless, mustachioed man, his hands behind his back, has been circulating today that bears resemblance to the well known pictures of a younger Guzman.

There was a $5 million bounty on Guzman’s head.

Guzman, 56, has escaped from custody before, getting rolled out of prison in a laundry cart in 2001, reportedly with the help of guards. If the authorities manage to hold on to him this time, it could spell the end of the most powerful drug runner in history.

Forbes ranked Guzman 67 out of 72 on our most recent list of the World’s Most Powerful People. His Sinaloa cartel is easily the most powerful in Mexico, responsible for an estimated 25% of all illegal drugs that enter the U.S. via Mexico. Drug enforcement experts estimate, conservatively, that the cartel’s annual revenues may exceed $3 billion.

In 2011, Forbes writer Nathan Vardi reported on how the kingpin had surpassed Pablo Escobar to become the biggest ever. “Chapo has a vast criminal enterprise and he has become the leading drug trafficker of all time,” a senior U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official told Forbes. “He is the godfather of the drug world.

Last February the city of Chicago branded him the first “Public Enemy No. 1″ since Al Capone. Last year Forbes also removed Guzman from our annual list of the World’s Billionaires. Although it is highly likely that Guzman and his family have socked away at least a billion in narco-profits over the years, proving it is simply impossible. He first appeared on the billionaires list in 2009. Also in 2013, Guzman was falsely declared dead, rumored to have suffered a heart attack while in hiding in Honduras.

Presaging his capture, Forbes contributor Dolia Estevez wrote this piece in January, making the case for why 2014 was shaping up to be the year of Guzman’s demise. Conspiracy buffs surmise that the authorities have always known where Chapo was, and that the only reason for his ultimate apprehension is because his usefulness had run its course. Last month Mexico’s El Universalnewspaper revealed that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency had allowed Guzman’s cartel to operate unimpeded from 2000 to 2012 in exchange for information on competing cartels.

Will another stint in prison really bring the end of El Chapo? It didn’t before. During his previous eight years in the clink Guzman continued to manage his cartel via cell phone, while enjoying access to booze, women and a home entertainment system. It was in January 2001, when facing extradition to the U.S., that he slipped into a laundry cart and was rolled out to freedom.

Some biographical info from Forbes’ 2009 profile of Guzman:

Guzmán grew up in the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa in a rural region that has produced big drug traffickers. The farm boy was likely exposed to the trade at a young age. Officials say he honed his drug-running skills working for different gangs, most notably as an airplane logistics expert for Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, “El Padrino,” or the Godfather, the country’s leading trafficker at the time. Gallardo was arrested in 1989.

By the early 1990s Guzmán had started his own international firm. Business didn’t always run smoothly. In 1993, at the northern border, Mexican authorities seized a 7-ton shipment of cocaine, believed to be his, that was hidden in chili pepper cans. The same year rival gang members, apparently trying to kill Guzmán at the Guadalajara airport, bumped off a Catholic cardinal instead. Also that year he was captured and convicted for homicide and drug trafficking.

A 1995 U.S. indictment alleges he directed a vast network of employees and assets, including warehouses in California, New Jersey and Chicago; a tunnel, running 65 feet deep and 1,416 feet long, between Mexico and Otay Mesa, Calif.; an executive jet rental business; and railcars carrying cooking oil. At least one of his employees was in charge of paying off Mexican prosecutors and police, allegedly dropping $1 million in cash in 1991 for the release of Guzmán’s brother, “El Pollo,” from a Mexico City prison. (El Pollo was murdered in 2004.)

Since his escape in 2001 Guzman consolidated his power and continued to operate brazenly, even digging massive tunnels under the U.S. border to move cocaine. In 2011 he even sent his beauty queen wife Emma Coronel (an American citizen) to a hospital north of Los Angeles to deliver twin girls. U.S. law enforcement could only watch as she returned to Mexico with her babies. (You can expect that episode to be dramatized in a new TV series based on Guzman’s exploits.)

Mexico’s drug war has claimed more than 70,000 lives in recent years. We can only hope that the capture of Guzman helps bring it to an end rather than ignite a battle among the second tier of bosses over who gets to step into los zapatos de Chapo’s.

Joaquin Guzman Loera

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AFP/Newscom