The leader of the powerful Los Choneros gang, Jose Adolfo Macias, alias 'Fito,' has gone missing from his prison cell
The leader of the powerful Los Choneros gang, Jose Adolfo Macias, alias "Fito", was reported missing on Sunday by authorities who launched a search of the penitentiary in the port city of Guayaquil AFP

One of Ecuador's most feared gangsters is believed to have escaped from prison, a government spokesman said Monday as hundreds of police officers searched a maximum security jail.

The leader of the powerful Los Choneros gang, Jose Adolfo Macias, alias "Fito", was reported missing on Sunday by authorities who launched the search of the penitentiary in the port city of Guayaquil.

"The most likely" scenario is that he fled several hours before a planned police operation in the prison, said government spokesman Roberto Izurieta.

"The full force of the State is being deployed to find this extremely dangerous individual."

Authorities have not confirmed the escape of the 44-year-old criminal boss.

Izurieta bemoaned "the level of infiltration" of criminal groups, and said the Ecuadorian prison system had "failed."

Long a peaceful haven between top cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has seen violence explode in recent years as enemy gangs with links to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.

Gang wars largely play out in the country's prisons, where criminal leaders such as Fito wield immense control.

The battles have left some 460 people dead inside the country's prisons since 2021, their bodies often found dismembered, decapitated, or incinerated.

Fito has been held since 2011, serving a 34-year sentence for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.

In a massive operation involving thousands of security forces, he was transferred to the 150-person La Roca prison in August last year, after the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.

A week before his death, Villavicencio said he had received threats from the gang.