The former Sinaloa Cartel boss, real name Joaquin Guzman, was found guilty of the crimes after jurors at a courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, spent six days deliberating the charges.

Jeffrey Lichtman, centre, a defence attorney for Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, speaks to reporters at federal court in NY.

Guzman is believed to have led the cartel for decades, and faced a total of 17 charges, including including operating a continuing criminal enterprise conspiring to murder rivals and money laundering.

Emma Coronel Aispuro, wife of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, at federal court in Brooklyn.

The trial testimony lasted almost three months and the jurors have been tasked with deciding on 10 separate counts. He now faces a possible sentence of life in prison.

Reporters said that El Chapo and his wife, Emma Colonel, didn't show any emotions while the jury read the verdict but afterward, Chapo looked at her and waved.

Guzman, one of the major figures in Mexican drug wars that have roiled the country since 2006, was extradited to the United States for trial in 2017 after he was arrested in Mexico the year before.

The tension at times was cut by some of the trial's sideshows, such as the sight of Guzman and his wife showing up in matching burgundy velvet blazers in a gesture of solidarity.

Guzman's lawyers say he was set up as a "fall guy" by Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, a powerful drug lord from Sinaloa who remains at large.

In the trial, which has lasted several months, prosecutors used more than 50 witnesses to detail Guzman's involvement in making billions of dollars distributing drugs in the U.S. Now, the jury has handed in their verdict, finding the Sinaloa Cartel's leader guilty on all ten counts.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was elected a year ago after promising a change to the deadly military-led war against drug gangs, suggesting a negotiated peace and amnesty for non-violent drug dealers, traffickers and farmers.

The drug boss escaped from prison twice - once in 2001 by hiding in a laundry bin, and again in 2014 when he escaped through tunnels on a specially adapted small motorcycle. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected past year after promising a change, suggesting a negotiated peace and amnesty for non-violent drug dealers, traffickers, and farmers.

The most detailed evidence against Guzman came from more than a dozen former associates who struck deals to cooperate with USA prosecutors.

Guzmán, once listed on Forbes' Billionaires List, has always been a slippery and near-mythical figure.

Guzman listened to a drumbeat of guilty verdicts on drug and conspiracy charges that could put the 61-year-old escape artist behind bars for decades in a maximum-security US prison selected to thwart another one of the breakouts that made him a folk hero in his native country.