The director of the FBI, Kash Patel, announced this Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee of the United States that the agency captured in Venezuela the last fugitive on its list of ten most wanted, thus completing the arrest of all members on that list.
"This weekend, we captured a criminal in Venezuela who was on our most wanted list and had been on the run for years," Patel stated during the briefing. The director did not immediately reveal the identity of the detainee, although he confirmed that he was already on his way to the United States.
It was Fox News, citing a confirmation from the FBI itself, that identified the captured individual as Aníbal Alexander Canelón Aguirre, a Venezuelan known by the aliases "Prometheus" and "The Engineer".
Canelón Aguirre was added to the list on March 12, 2026, becoming the first "cyber fugitive" in the history of that registry, which has existed since 1950 and has processed 541 individuals over its more than seven decades.
The FBI accuses him of leading an international conspiracy that deployed groups on U.S. territory to steal millions of dollars from financial institutions through a technique known as "ATM jackpotting": the use of malicious software to force the massive withdrawal of cash from ATMs.
According to investigations, the network operated from January 2024 and executed more than 117 attacks against financial institutions in the United States, with confirmed losses of at least 5.4 million dollars.
The charges he faces include conspiracy to commit bank fraud, bank robbery, intentional damage to computer systems, money laundering, and providing material support to terrorists.
This last position is directly linked to the Tren de Aragua: the FBI claims that the money obtained through jackpotting ended up in a money laundering network connected to this Venezuelan criminal organization, designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States.
A federal arrest warrant had been issued in December 2025 by a federal court in Nebraska, and the agency even offered a reward of up to one million dollars for information leading to his capture.
The historical leader of the Tren de Aragua, Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, known as "Niño Guerrero," was neutralized in a U.S. operation announced in June 2026, reflecting Washington's sustained pressure against that criminal network.
The capture of Canelón Aguirre on Venezuelan soil occurs in a particular political context: following the arrest of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces at the beginning of the year, the Venezuelan government is led by acting president Delcy Rodríguez, although the details of the operation that led to the apprehension were not disclosed by Patel.
The announcement had a revealing moment during the hearing: Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, mentioned nine arrests, and it was the FBI director himself who corrected him to state that the number had actually risen to ten, presenting the fact as one of the most significant achievements of his leadership at the agency.
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