A TikTok creator apparently had no idea who the woman was when he began insulting her during a livestream. The chat did.

The woman was Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of imprisoned Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and the increasingly uncomfortable encounter with a TikToker known as “Chico Rabia” has gone viral after viewers began telling him exactly who he was talking to.

The confrontation unfolded during a TikTok Live involving Coronel, Chico Rabia and several other participants. The creator was using aggressive language toward people in the conversation when Coronel intervened and asked how she could remove him from the live.

His attention then turned to her.

During the exchange, Chico Rabia called Coronel “smelly” and “disgusting” and made disparaging comments about her appearance, according to videos of the livestream and Mexican media reports documenting the confrontation. Other participants attempted to calm the situation.

Then viewers stepped in.

Comments began appearing informing the creator that the woman he was insulting was Coronel, the wife of one of the world’s most notorious convicted drug traffickers.

Guzmán, the former leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, is serving a life sentence in federal prison in the United States. He was convicted in New York in 2019 on charges including participating in a continuing criminal enterprise, drug trafficking and money laundering.

Clips of the TikTok confrontation were recorded and reposted across social media, where the story quickly grew beyond the original argument.

Chico Rabia’s accounts began receiving messages referencing “La Chapiza,” the name commonly used for the Sinaloa Cartel faction associated with Guzmán’s sons. Some of the messages circulating online were characterized as threats.

There is, however, no public evidence connecting those messages to members of the Sinaloa Cartel or establishing that the criminal organization threatened the TikToker. The available evidence shows social media users making references to the group.

By Aug. 18, Chico Rabia was back in front of Coronel, this time with a very different message.

He apologized.

“I was stopping by because I wanted to apologize for what happened,” he told her during another online interaction, according to videos of the exchange. He acknowledged that he had gone too far.

Coronel accepted.

Rather than escalating the dispute, she also asked her followers to stop attacking the creator. Coronel said she did not agree with the way he expressed himself but recognized that his confrontational behavior was part of his online persona.

The strange encounter is not even Coronel’s first recent viral TikTok moment involving a creator who apparently failed to recognize her.

Days earlier, Honduran influencer Davis Flow flirted with Coronel during another livestream, complimenting her and asking personal questions before viewers began explaining who she was. His reaction after learning that he was talking to El Chapo’s wife also spread across social media.

The encounters come as Coronel builds an increasingly public life following her release from U.S. custody in September 2023.

Coronel, who holds U.S. and Mexican citizenship, pleaded guilty in 2021 to federal charges involving drug trafficking, money laundering and transactions involving a designated foreign narcotics trafficker. She was sentenced to three years in prison.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, Coronel also helped facilitate communications between Guzmán and other cartel members while he was imprisoned in Mexico and assisted in planning his 2015 escape from the Altiplano prison.

Since completing her sentence, however, Coronel has moved increasingly into entertainment, fashion and social media. She has modeled, appeared at public events and become active on TikTok. In July, she appeared onstage at BelicoFest in Los Angeles in connection with clothing brand April Black Diamond.

She has also told her story publicly in the documentary Married to El Chapo: Emma Coronel Speaks, discussing her marriage, prison experience and life after incarceration.