‘Pipo’ Chavarría, the most wanted drug trafficker in Ecuador, arrested in Malaga | Spain

Wilmer Geovanny Chavarría Barre, alias Stocking cap, Ecuador’s most wanted drug trafficker. The man was arrested upon arrival at the Costa del Sol airport from Morocco under a false identity – Danilo Ramón Fernández Calderón – in a joint operation with Ecuadorian security forces. He leads the powerful criminal gang Los Lobos and is linked to several explosive attacks in Guayaquil “to intimidate the President of Ecuador and hinder prison reforms,” according to police sources. “We have captured the highest value target. Today the mafias retreat. Today Ecuador wins,”

The arrest – for falsifying documents – has been part of an operation called Be reborn because Chavarría had gone so far as to fake his own death in 2021 to avoid justice. He then obtained a new Venezuelan identity and then obtained a Colombian passport to travel to Spain and establish his base of operations in Europe, although he also spent stages in the United Arab Emirates, according to the Ecuadorian Government. After his arrest, the National Police has reported that it is awaiting a red noticeone to proceed with the extradition of the detainee “for his involvement in events that occurred in Ecuador,” according to police sources. The criminal was in command of Los Lobos, the largest and most powerful Ecuadorian criminal gang in the Andean country and had currently been arrested. “The organization has terrorist and foreign influence capacity, as well as the ability to evade international justice,” police sources have highlighted.

Chavarría “led a broad drug trafficking and criminal scheme in the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Mexico and Colombia, with direct connections to the New Generation Ecuador Cartel (CNGE) and alliances with Mexican, Colombian and European cartels,” reported the Minister of the Interior of Ecuador, John Reimberg, who is in Spain this Sunday. He has been one of the Ecuadorian authorities who has participated in the extensive operation to arrest Chavarría, coordinated by agents from the Central Drug and Organized Crime Unit (Udyco). The minister has described the police action as “a historic blow to the security” of his country. “Chavarría Barre is responsible for at least 400 deaths and for years he managed criminal operations from the Litoral Penitentiary and the Turi prison, where he was held between 2011 and 2019.” The United States Undersecretary of State has also celebrated the arrest: “Remember: if governments do not fight crime, it is because they are accomplices; tolerating crime is a choice, not a destiny,” he noted in a message on X.

Chavarría – the most wanted criminal in his country after – is linked to several recent explosive attacks in Guayaquil through the use of car bombs and drones activated from prisons. Between September 2024 and October 2025, at least four coordinated attacks were recorded from the La Roca maximum security prison. The National Police confirms the financing of attacks from Spain “to intimidate the president of Ecuador and hinder prison reforms.” “He changed his identity and hid in Europe while ordering murders in Ecuador, controlling illegal mining operations and… Some left him for dead; we looked for him in his very hell. That is the difference when there is the will to fight for your country,” the president said this Sunday on social networks.

The president made the announcement coinciding with the inauguration of election day in Ecuador, as well as more flexibility for the arrival of investments and job creation. After casting his vote in the coastal commune of Olón in the province of Santa Elena, where he has his beach residence, Noboa declared that the capture of Stocking cap Chavarría was possible “thanks to international cooperation with Spain and the United States.” “We have carried out a fairly effective and very well-coordinated operation. International cooperation is the best way to combat these groups,” said the president, who among his proposals for this referendum also proposes allowing the installation of foreign military bases again.

Los Lobos had become the criminal gang with the greatest power in Ecuador, by leading the war of criminal organizations that has been registered in the country since the end of 2020, and was the most successful in displacing them. He achieved this, according to authorities, thanks to an alliance with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel to ship cocaine to Mexico, coming mainly from Colombia, in contrast to its rivals who are allied with the Sinaloa cartel. Los Lobos increased their radius of action and diversified their activities by also entering heavily into illegal mining and creating, also in agreement with the authorities, alliances with dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for the exploitation of illegal mining enclaves in border areas of the Amazon.