Who is Adolfo Macías, “Fito”, the most wanted criminal in Ecuador who was captured inside a bunker in a luxury house

The Choneros, along with other powerful Ecuadorian criminal gangs, had become a key axis for drug trafficking towards Mexico.

According to local reports, Macías was found hidden in a bunker that could be accessed by raising a door that was on the floor of a luxury house.

“We will recover the country. Without truce,” Noboa said when he heard the news.

Noboa also said that his government was waiting for a response from the US authorities regarding the extradition of Fito.

US Prosecutors have made formal accusations against Macías in at least heavy cocaine distribution positions, conspiracy and crimes related to firearms.

These accusations include a concrete collaboration with the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico to control cocaine traffic routes.

Macías filled the headlines of Ecuador's newspapers and around the world when the coastal escape of the Coast in Guayaquil in January 2024 was reported.

At that moment Ecuador lived a very delicate moment. A few months before, in August 2023, hitmen had shot dead candidate Fernando Villavicencio.

In addition, a critical situation was lived within the prisons: from 2021 to 2024 about 400 deaths were reported in Ecuador's prisons for clashes between rival bands.

In those numbers, the band that led Fito, Los Choneros, whose germ is in the coastal province of Manabí, where the people of Chone is.

At the time of his escape, Fito served – since 2011 – a sentence of 34 years in prison for crimes related to drug trafficking, organized crime and murder.

But his criminal career had begun when he worked as a taxi driver and mechanical in his city, Manta, located in the province of Manabí, in the mid -90s.

There he met Jorge Bismarck Véliz Spain, known with the alias of Lieutenant Spain, who recruited him for his organization. He began stealing cars and subsequently ascending within the organization.

This happened while the criminal organization began to have links with Colombian and Mexican drug cartels.

In 2011 he was captured and sent to jail. Although in 2013 he managed to escape and be recaptured three months later.

But due to the lack of control of the authorities, Fito had managed to control not only prison activities amid luxuries and comforts, but also lead to leading his band from his confinement.

In fact, his escape was when members of the Ecuadorian security forces tried to transfer him to a maximum security prison after the luxuries with which he lived in the prison of the coast were announced.

But how Fito and the Choneros, who began as a band that was dedicated to the theft of cars, became the most feared names of Ecuador?

An answer has to do with the geographical and strategic position of Ecuador.

“Ecuador has a central role, a while ago in the transport of cocaine both to the United States and to Europe. It also shares a border with Colombia just in the area where the coca leaf occurs,” Carolina Sampó, a doctor and researcher of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina from Argentina, told BBC

“If that adds to the weakness of the State and the lack of resources of state institutions, that makes Ecuador unfortunately become a space not only transit, but also from which to operate,” he adds.

“This makes Ecuador a space quoted by criminal organizations.”

As a consequence, says the expert, for a few years Ecuador suffers a wave of violence exacerbated by the territorial struggles of the drug traffickers of Colombia and Mexico.

“Fito” became the leader of the band after Ecuador's authorities confirmed in 2023 Death in Colombia of the previous leaderJúnior Roldán, a few days after recovering his freedom.

Roldán shared the leadership of the regional prison with “Fito”.

Fito, in addition, had already caught attention with his wishes to escape.

He only had two years between bars when in 2013 he managed to evade, along with other prisoners of high danger, the controls of the maximum security prison known as La Roca, in Guayaquil.

He did it navigating a boat along the Daule Riverthat runs parallel to prison.

Three months passed before the authorities managed to capture it and take it again to the penitentiary institution.

According to the local media, in the Guayaquil prison The criminal not only obtained a lawyer title but for a decade he controlled his drug trafficking operations, extended extortion practices and ordered murders.

The media ensures that in May 2023, The capo had more than US $ 23 million Between frontmen, ghost companies and other activities.

And it seems that under the leadership of Macías, The band maintained before their escape in January 2024, an extortion scheme to the rest of the prisoners.

The calculations of the Anti -Narcotics Investigation Directorate, cited by first US $ 70,000 a week per pavilion.

One of the prisoners that coincided with him in the regional, the prison where he was transferred to a maximum security prison in August 2023, affirms that the criminal created pools in spaces of the pavilions destined to walk or stretch his legs, He organized parties, filmed videos, offered press wheels or introduced weapons with drones.

“The guides have no choice but to become accomplices, their families are already threatened. To prisoners, Choneros charge us between US $ 10 and US $ 20 per week For the stay, without counting what they force you to buy, ”said the man, under anonymity, to the publication.

So, appeared in photographs obese, with long hair and prominent beard. Thousands of uniformed watched him, in one of the largest military and police operations that former president Guillermo Lasso made there.

And that was the image that most knew about him. Until Wednesday when the authorities reported their capture and noticed with less weight and beard and cut hair.

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