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Throughout his long and bloody career, the drug kingpin known as El Chapo has proved to be a master of escape, breaking out of two Mexican prisons to continue his reign leading the Sinaloa cartel.

Within hours of being sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday, the notorious Mexican crime lord, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, was whisked away from a federal jail in Manhattan and transferred to an undisclosed location, his lawyers said.

Mr. Guzman’s whereabouts remained a mystery for two days, even for his lawyers. But late Friday afternoon, the Bureau of Prisons confirmed that Mr. Guzmán had been taken to the nation’s most forbidding federal prison, the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, or ADX, in Florence, Colo.

The intense secrecy surrounding Mr. Guzmán’s transfer to another prison reflected the anxiety over his Houdini-like ability to engineer escapes in the past and the deep financial resources at the disposal of the cartel. (Prosecutors say a “conservative” estimate of Mr. Guzmán’s career earnings is about $12.7 billion.)