FBI

The FBI's listing for Jose Luis Saenz after his capture last week in Mexico.

An alleged drug cartel hit man on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list was living a relatively normal life when he was arrested last week in Mexico, the FBI said Monday.

The man, Jose Luis Saenz, who is 36 or 37 (the FBI listed four possible birthdates), went to great lengths to build that life, agents said Monday after his arraignment in Los Angeles in connection with four brutal murders in California from 1998 to 2008.

When he was taken into custody Thursday at his apartment in Guadalajara — partly as a result of a $100,000 reward, the FBI said — Saenz identified himself as "Giovanni Torres," just one of 21 aliases the FBI said he was known to have used.

Saenz had also put on significant weight and had undergone procedures to remove identifying tattoos on his arms, it said. He had even tried to alter his fingerprints.

Saenz is accused of three murders in Los Angeles in 1998: the killings of two alleged rival gang members and the kidnap, rape and slaying of his estranged girlfriend two weeks later.

Investigators said Saenz killed Sigrieta Hernandez, his girlfriend and the mother of his daughter, because he believed she was going to tell police about the gang slayings.

Saenz was added to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list in 2009, after he was linked with a fourth homicide in Whittier, Calif., in October 2008. 

The victim in that case, identified as Oscar Torres, was killed over a drug debt, authorities said. A security camera videotaped a man believed to be Saenz in the act of killing Torres, wounding another person and leaving the scene in a stretch limousine. 

The FBI said Saenz was believed to be highly dangerous because he had "reportedly made previous statements indicating plans to kill a police officer upon his arrest."

In Mexico, Saenz was working as a hit man for a drug cartel in Guadalajara, "living as an average citizen in an apartment above a beauty salon," FBI agent Scott Garriola said.

"We were dogged in our determination to find him, but when you have that many aliases and you have that much money and connections and you move around that much, it makes it a little more difficult," Garriola said.

He was flown Friday night to Los Angeles, where he told reporters he was "not guilty for life."

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Steve Marcus / Reuters

A police car blocks the road Friday as federal and local law enforcement officials take artwork from a storage building in Boulder City, Nevada, in a seizure related to the arrest of German fugitive Ulrich Felix Anton Engler.

A German fugitive sought for five years in a Florida-based fraud scheme that netted more than $100 million has been arrested in Las Vegas, authorities said Friday.

Ulrich Felix Anton Engler, 51, was arrested for being in violation of U.S. immigration law, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said.

He is wanted on criminal charges filed in Mannheim and Hamburg, Germany, courts where he is accused of committing fraud on a repetitive and gainful basis, officials said in a prepared statement. If convicted, Engler faces up to 20 years in prison.

A fingerprint match from a Feb. 11, 2011, drunken driving case in which a Nevada Highway Patrol officer cited Engler, who may have used a different name at the time, helped U.S. Marshals track him down, The Associated Press reported.

“I hope Mr. Engler's victims in this case feel a measure of relief that Mr. Engler's fraud and long run are over and that he will soon face justice in Germany for his alleged crimes," said ICE Director John Morton.

The FBI and local police on Friday seized more than 1,000 pieces of artwork from a storage facility that Engler allegedly rented in Boulder City, about 25 miles east of Las Vegas.

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FBI Agent Patrick Turner in Las Vegas called the action an effort to recover proceeds on behalf of Engler's alleged victims.

Engler is accused of using a marketing company in Cape Coral, Fla., to build an Internet pyramid scheme. From June 2003 to December 2004, it collected almost $101 million from more than 3,500 investors in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, authorities said. Once the money reached the United States, investors lost access to it, they said.

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When the arrest warrant was issued in Germany, Engler was believed to have been living in Florida.

Last year, U.S. marshals and INTERPOL officials in Washington determined Engler was living in Nevada, where he was perpetuating his fraud schemes under a new identity, Joseph Miller, officials said.

He will be turned over to law enforcement officials in Germany, they said.

This article includes reporting by The Associated Press and NBC News' Jim Gold.

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Two months after scaling at 13-foot-high fence to escape a Tokyo aquarium, Japan's now-famous fugitive penguin has reportedly been nabbed.

Two Tokyo Sea Life keepers caught the elusive penguin, known only as Number 337, late Thursday on the bank of one of the rivers leading into Tokyo Bay, the BBC reported.

Penguin scales wall to escape from Tokyo aquarium

Tokyo Sea Life Park / AFP - Getty Images

Tokyo Sea Life Park's escaped Humboldt penguin, known only as Number 337, was captured Thursday after two months roaming free in Tokyo Bay.

The keepers had received a tip-off call earlier in the day -- one of several sightings since the penguin successfully made its bid for freedom in March.

According to the AFP news agency, Number 337 was found under a bridge around five miles from the aquarium.

A spokesman for the aquarium told the BBC that the penguin was in good condition but was being examined.

"It hasn't lost weight," the spokesman said. "It hasn't got fatter either but its health seems good."

According to the BBC, Tokyo Sea Life Park deputy director Kazuhiro Sakamoto told Japan's Kyodo news agency that he was "relieved to see the penguin come back alive."

After a sighting that was recorded on video earlier this month, Sakamoto said it did not appear that Number 337 was suffering, and said, "It looks as if it's been living quite happily in the middle of Tokyo Bay."

Japan's fugitive penguin 'living quite happily' in Tokyo Bay

The penguin, hatched in 2011, had shared life in a rocky outdoor enclosure at the aquarium with 135 other Humboldts and a number of other penguins prior to its escape.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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