Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias "Fito." Ecuadorian security forces captured the country’s most notorious criminal leader in a crucial — though largely symbolic — win in its “war on gangs.”
A joint operation by police and military on June 25 led to the capture of Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias “Fito,” leader of the Choneros, one of Ecuador’s top drug trafficking groups.
The operation, which reportedly lasted 10 hours, led security forces to a mansion in Montecristi, a town just outside Manta, Fito’s home city. Pictures and videos circulating on social media show soldiers opening what appears to be a trap door in the floor of the mansion, leading to a bunker in which Fito was hiding.
“Fito has fallen, and they will all fall,” Giancarlo Loffredo, Ecuador’s defense minister, said in a press conference a day after the capture.
Under Fito’s leadership, the Choneros have leveraged their connections and sway in the strategic coastal province of Manabí — home to Manta — to become a key link in the transnational cocaine supply chain.
The group oversees the arrival of cocaine shipments from Colombia, later exporting the drug on a fleet of go-fast boats and other vessels to destinations in Central America and Mexico. From there, cocaine is shipped on to consumer markets in North America and Europe.
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In April, the United States indicted Fito for conspiring to traffic cocaine into the country, accusing the Choneros of working “with Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel, to traffic cocaine from Colombia through Ecuador and into Mexico.”
The indictment opens the door to Fito becoming the first Ecuadorian criminal extradited to the United States on drug trafficking charges. The extradition of Ecuadorians to other countries was legalized after an April 2024 referendum.
“We have done our part to proceed with Fito’s extradition to the United States, we are awaiting their response,” President Daniel Noboa said in a post on X following the capture.
While Ecuador awaits Fito’s potential extradition, the crime boss will return to the prison complex in the city of Guayaquil, from where he has escaped twice, in 2013 and 2024.
His escape in January 2024, sparked a military crackdown on the prison system, which in turn led gangs to launch coordinated attacks on public institutions, including the takeover of a television station while it was on air.
In response to the gang attacks, Noboa declared a “state of internal armed conflict,” authorizing the military to confront the gangs head on and declaring 22 criminal groups as “terrorist” organizations.
Fito’s disappearance prompted a year and a half-long search for the leader, with many theorizing he had taken refuge outside the country or in Ecuador’s hard-to-reach mountainous and Amazon zones.
As part of the search process, the government dismantled parts of the leader’s money laundering network and arrested scores of family members allegedly involved in his criminal schemes.
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InSight Crime Analysis
Fito’s capture will likely boost public opinion of Noboa’s security policies, but it will not turn the tide against drug trafficking and gang violence.
The arrest of Ecuador’s criminal icon reinforces Noboa’s credentials as a crime fighter. The president has prioritized security concerns throughout his term in office, responding to strong political pressure stemming from an exponential rise in crime-related violence in recent years.
However, Noboa’s hardline policies have so far had limited success in addressing the issue. In fact, May 2025 was Ecuador’s most deadly month ever, with 915 homicides, according to government figures.
Total homicides in the first five months of 2025 were 35% above the total for the same period in 2023, Ecuador’s most violent year on record.
Recent events have also called into question the government’s control of the prison system, which has long served as a key base for criminal groups.
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On June 20, Rolando Federico Gómez Quinde, alias “Fede,” a leader of a faction of the Choneros called the Águilas, escaped from Guayaquil’s prison complex. Days later, on June 24, businessman Daniel Salcedo, a central figure in multiple high-level corruption cases, was attacked in prison in Riobamba. Salcedo survived the attack.
Fito’s arrest may quiet critics and build support for a series of controversial laws intended to enhance the government’s ability to combat criminal groups, which critics have denounced as a power grab and human rights risk.
But the impact of Fito’s capture on the Choneros remains to be seen. Fito previously ran his own criminal fiefdom from within the Guayaquil prison complex, aided by corrupt public officials, a December 2024 InSight Crime investigation found.
This facilitated his infamous January 2024 escape. Now back in prison, Fito’s wealth and influence mean that he could once again lead the Choneros from behind bars, said Michelle Maffei, an Ecuadorian security expert.
“The organization will only change the moment Fito dies,” she told InSight Crime. “Organized crime can buy everyone.”
It is also possible that Fito’s capture could accelerate the fragmentation of the Choneros. Wider changes in Ecuador’s criminal landscape since his escape mean the Choneros are far less cohesive than they once were.
Since its rise in the 2010s, the group has styled itself as a franchise, with regional and local leaders maintaining significant autonomy while using the Choneros name.
The military intervention in the prisons starting in January 2024 disrupted these fragile links, breaking lines of communication between leadership in the prisons and rank-and-file members in the streets.
Now, formerly Choneros-affiliated gangs have begun acting more independently, choosing their own alliances and even fighting among each other.
The government may manage to extradite Fito or sever his communications within Ecuador’s prisons, something it could not achieve in the past. If this happens, it will only exacerbate fragmentation, especially as Fito, the last top leader holding the group together, has no clear successor.
“In the worst-case scenario, the Choneros start to atomize, and that is a very serious problem in terms of the homicide rate,” Maffei told InSight Crime, highlighting recent violence within other splintering groups like the Chone Killers and Tiguerones.
With or without Fito, Ecuador will continue to be a top cocaine transit nation. Systemic corruption that has plagued Ecuador’s government at nearly every level has enabled European, Mexican, and other criminal networks to set up operations in the country. As Ecuador’s criminal landscape shifts, these networks will find new Ecuadorian partners.
