Reports emerged Friday evening that Mexican notorious drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman had been recaptured by Mexican authorities, having escaped through a tunnel from Mexico’s maximum security prison in July.

However, new findings have revealed that the capture of the prison escapee was made possible by an interview he had with famous Hollywood star, Sean Penn for Rolling Stone magazine which got published on Saturday night.

Media outlets have reported that Guzman tried to facilitate a movie to be made of him.

He then used intermediaries who contacted some potential film corporations.

Penn had the first-ever interview with Guzman in October after it was arranged through Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, known for her portrayal of a female drug lord.

She was first contacted in 2012 by the drug kingpin after tweeting that he should start “trafficking with love.”

He contacted her again after his arrest in February 2014, when “gringos were scrambling to tell his story,” Penn wrote.

Guzman was recaptured Friday in the city of Los Mochis in his home state of Sinaloa in a shootout that killed five of his associates and wounded one marine.

A Mexican law enforcement official said on Saturday that the October interview in the remote community of Tamazula in the northern state of Durango helped authorities track the whereabouts of the drug lord, who earns millions, shipping tons of cocaine and manufacturing, transporting methamphetamine and heroin to world markets, the largest being the U.S. market.

Three days after the interview, members of the Mexican Navy launched an operation to capture him, but Attorney General Arely Gomez said on Friday that it was aborted because he was accompanied by two women and a young girl, whom they did not want to harm.

But El Chapo was later tracked to a home in Los Mochis that was under surveillance for a month before marines moved in on Friday, January 8.

Read the rest of the interview here.