Pipo Captured - How A Dead Man Built a Cocaine Empire From Southern Spain

The head of Ecuador's Los Lobos criminal gang has been arrested after four years on the run, seven plastic surgeries, and confirms Latin American gangs shifting to Spain.

On the afternoon of November 16, 2025, Spanish police officers approached a man in a black and green tracksuit on a residential street in Málaga. Just like that, Wilmer Geovanny Chavarría Barré, alias “Pipo,” supreme leader of Los Lobos, Ecuador’s largest criminal organization, was escorted to a waiting patrol car. The photograph released hours later showed two officers flanking a middle-aged man whose surgically altered face bore no resemblance to police records from four years earlier.​

Police escort alias Pipo away after arresting him in Malaga. Source: Spanish National Police.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa announced the capture himself, timing it perfectly for political impact. By coincidence, same day, Ecuadorians were voting on a referendum that included a measure to allow foreign military bases, a policy Noboa had framed as essential for anti-drug cooperation. The referendum failed to pass.

Pipo’s capture was extraordinary.