José Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias ‘Fito’
| Name | José Adolfo Macías Villamar |
| Alias | Fito |
| Country | Ecuador |
| Criminal Group | The Choneros |
| Location | US Prison |
| Status | Captured |
This is the story of José Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias “Fito,” one of Ecuador’s top crime bosses and the leader of a powerful criminal group called the Choneros.
As a young man growing up in the coastal city of Manta in the 1990s and 2000s, Fito met Jorge Luis Zambrano, alias “Rasquiña,” and other leaders of the Choneros. At this time, the Choneros were a rising power in Manta’s criminal landscape, dedicated to robbery, extortion, and increasingly, drug trafficking.
By the early 2010s, Fito had risen to a leadership position within the Choneros, acting as a partner to Rasquiña, the group’s new leader. But in 2011, he was arrested for murder and sentenced to 34 years in Ecuador’s maximum security prison, La Roca.
Two years later, Rasquiña and Fito were part of a massive jailbreak: 18 prisoners — leveraging relationships with corrupt prison guards and police — cut through a fence and presumably escaped by boat on the river that ran behind the prison. Within nine months, they had all been recaptured.
But this did not stop the Choneros.
The group expanded its power, with leaders like Fito running both the prison and the group’s criminal empire from their cells, decked out with relative luxuries like a queen-sized bed, ensuite bathroom, television, air conditioning, and a stocked mini fridge.
After Rasquiña was murdered in 2020, Fito eventually rose to take his place, overseeing the Choneros as gang violence in the country surged to record levels.
Then, in 2024, Fito escaped again.
For a year and a half, he was Ecuador’s most-wanted criminal. In March 2025, Ecuadorian authorities offered a whopping $1 million bounty for information leading to his capture. His escape was a pivotal moment in Ecuador’s battle against organized crime: it sparked a military crackdown on the prison system, and in retaliation, gangs coordinated attacks on public institutions, including the takeover of a television station while on air.
Fito was finally captured in June 2025. He was found hiding out in an opulent mansion complete with an underground bunker, just minutes from his hometown of Manta. After his arrest, Fito was returned to La Roca, the same prison from which he had escaped in 2013. Less than a month later, he was extradited to the United States.
One of Ecuador’s most powerful criminal groups, the Choneros has been a key player in the unprecedented violence besieging the country in recent years.
The group formed in the 1990s in Ecuador’s western province of Manabí. After several of its leaders were arrested in the early 2010s, the Choneros began operating from behind bars, integrating smaller gangs into their network and expanding their influence throughout the country’s prisons and streets.
When Choneros leader alias “Rasquiña” was murdered in 2020, the group splintered. The war between these factions fueled violence both inside and outside the prisons at levels previously unseen in Ecuador.
Amid its increasing fragmentation, the recapture of current boss Fito is the group’s latest challenge.
The Choneros
Dig deeper:
Fito had escaped from a maximum-security facility for the second time in ten years. But unlike 2013, when he and 17 more of Ecuador’s most dangerous criminals staged a cinematic jailbreak, this time he left no trace: no handcuffed guards or cut fences; no footprints or boats lying in wait. He had simply vanished.
The Prison Mafias: Ecuador’s Criminal Axis
Organized crime in Ecuador today operates on several levels. At the upper echelons are the drug traffickers who control Ecuador’s transnational cocaine trafficking business, and corrupt elites in politics, business, and within state institutions. At the bottom rung are gangs of disaffected youths and common criminals, who operate both on the country’s streets and in its prisons. The most powerful groups within the prison system, known in Ecuador as the “mafias,” stand at the intersection between these levels, connecting and coordinating between them.
Special Series: Ecuador’s War on Gangs
In this special series, InSight Crime tracks Noboa’s war on gangs and whether it succeeds, or fails, to disrupt the power of organized crime in the country.
Behind Bars, Beyond Control: The Fall of Ecuador’s Prisons and the Rise of its Mafias
The crisis in Ecuador’s prisons has escaped the confines of the penitentiary system to sow violence, corruption, and chaos around the country.
Annual Special
*Summer InSights 2025
This year, we are featuring several of the region’s biggest crime lords from four countries: Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico. In each, we examine a different kingpin’s rise to power, explore their influence on the national and regional crime scene, explain the ins and outs of criminal power struggles, and detail their dramatic arrests and escapes.