Federal authorities have announced the capture of a man they describe as a key leader of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, a fugitive who had been sitting on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted list since earlier this year. The arrest comes amid what the Trump administration is calling the largest campaign against transnational crime the federal government has ever undertaken.
The Justice Department identified the man as Anibal Alexander Canelon Aguirre, a 50-year-old Venezuelan national also known by the aliases “Prometheus” and “The Engineer.” According to the Department of Justice, Canelon Aguirre was added to the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list in March 2026. The agency alleges he was the mastermind behind malware used to drain cash from ATMs nationwide, part of a scheme investigators say drained $40 million from American banks.
That ATM jackpotting operation drew its own sprawling federal response. Reported losses from the jackpotting attacks totaled $40.73 million across more than 1,500 incidents through August 2025, according to a report from Fox Business. Since October 2025, the Justice Department has indicted 98 people for alleged roles in the nationwide conspiracy, and the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated 10 targets tied to the network, the outlet reported.
A Coordinated Multi-Agency Investigation
The case against the jackpotting ring did not fall to a single agency. The investigation involved the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the Justice Department's Joint Task Force Vulcan working alongside the Homeland Security Task Force, per the same Fox Business account. Joint Task Force Vulcan was originally created in 2019 to eradicate the MS-13 gang before its mission expanded to target Tren de Aragua, according to the Justice Department's Northern District of Illinois office.
As the Denver Gazette has reported, the Trump administration has waged an aggressive campaign against the gang since taking office, with President Trump designating Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organization in February 2025, a move Fox Business also noted in its coverage of the Treasury sanctions. Federal law enforcement had already launched more than 100 investigations into crimes tied to Tren de Aragua members as of December 2024, according to an NBC report cited by the Gazette.
Separate Cases Highlight Kidnapping and Torture Allegations
Beyond the financial crimes, federal prosecutors have pursued violent-crime cases tied to the gang in multiple states. Three Venezuelan nationals were each sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for kidnapping and torturing a Denver roommate in a ransom plot linked to Tren de Aragua, according to Fox News. Federal prosecutors separately indicted a fourth man, Brawins Dominique Suarez Villegas, also known as Chino San Vicente, for allegedly participating in the same kidnapping and torture scheme, the outlet reported.
The Justice Department has said it charged nearly 350 Tren de Aragua members and associates with crimes including alleged murders, sex trafficking, kidnapping, weapons and drug trafficking, robbery and financial crimes. The department also announced the unsealing of indictments against more than 70 people in a broader nationwide crackdown, though the dossier underlying that release does not spell out the full factual basis or court disposition for every individual named.
Disputed Arrest Totals and a National Crime Drop
The scale of the broader enforcement campaign is harder to pin down with precision. A White House release said task force data, released for the first time to the Washington Examiner, showed 1,296 Tren de Aragua gang members arrested as part of what officials called the largest federal anti-transnational crime operation in history. A separate White House page devoted to Colorado cited a different figure, saying more than 2,700 Tren de Aragua members had been arrested as announced in June 2025 — a discrepancy the available record does not reconcile.
The Homeland Security Task Forces behind the effort were launched in 2025 by the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department with the stated goal of identifying, finding and removing criminal rings and terrorist organizations embedded in U.S. communities, particularly Tren de Aragua. Separately, the FBI has reported that the nation's violent-crime rate fell 9.3% in 2025, which the bureau described as the largest year-to-year decline since it began estimating crime trends in 1936 — though that data does not establish a direct link between the decline and the Tren de Aragua enforcement push.
Tren de Aragua originated as a prison gang in Venezuela in the mid-2000s. The gang later spread across Venezuela, South America and into the United States, according to the Gazette's reporting. The gang's cells have been known for kidnapping, bribing public officials, extorting businesses and ordering attacks on U.S. law enforcement, the paper reported, citing cases including the 2021 shooting of two New York City police officers by suspected Tren de Aragua members and the 2024 murder of Laken Riley in Georgia, whose suspected killer was reported by the New York Post to be a gang member.
