This is the second individual from the list arrested in a week.
A fugitive accused of murdering his wife shortly after marriage has been apprehended from Mexico, according to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
“The FBI is announcing the capture of Ten Most Wanted Fugitive Arnoldo Jimenez after he was taken into custody without incident in Monterrey, Mexico on January 30,” said a Jan. 31
statement from the agency.
Multiple FBI units and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois collaborated to locate the fugitive. Agents from Mexico’s National Prosecutor’s Office, in conjunction with Interpol, eventually arrested the man. “Jimenez will remain in custody pending extradition proceedings.”
Jimenez was
wanted for allegedly murdering his wife less than 24 hours after their marriage. The incident took place in May 2012. His wife was found dead in the bathtub of her apartment. The Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, charged Jimenez with first-degree murder, and a state warrant for his arrest was issued.
This was followed by a federal arrest warrant from the Illinois District Court after Jimenez was charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
“The FBI is extremely appreciative of the Burbank Police Department, our law enforcement partners in Mexico, and the public for their tremendous investigative efforts and collaboration in the capture of Ten Most Wanted Fugitive Arnoldo Jimenez,” said Douglas S. DePodesta, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Chicago Field Office.
Jimenez was the 522nd individual to be mentioned in the Most Wanted list. The FBI had offered a reward of up to $250,000 for any information leading to his arrest.
He is also the second person from the Most Wanted list who has been arrested by authorities in the span of around a week.
Earlier on Jan. 25, Donald Eugene Fields, II, the 531st person to be placed on the list, was
arrested from Florida. The arrest occurred during a routine traffic stop when officers discovered that a license plate was not registered to the vehicle Fields was driving.
Fields was added to the list in May 2023 and faces child rape charges in a state court and child sex trafficking charges in a federal court.
Wanted Fugitives
With the arrests of Jimenez and Fields II,
eight more people on the current Most Wanted list remain free.
One of them is Alexis
Flores, a Honduran national, who is “wanted for his alleged involvement in the kidnapping and murder of a five-year-old girl in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” said the FBI. “The girl was reported missing in late July of 2000, and was later found strangled to death in a nearby apartment in early August of 2000.”
Another individual, Omar Alexander Cardenas, is wanted for allegedly
murdering a man and unlawfully fleeing to avoid getting prosecuted.
The killing took place in August 2019 in a large outdoor shipping center in California where Cardenas allegedly fired several rounds from his gun at the victim.
A third fugitive on the list, Bhadreshkumar Chetanbhai Patel, is
accused of murdering his wife in Maryland. He allegedly killed his wife “by striking her multiple times with an object while they were both working at a donut shop in Hanover.”
The FBI offers a reward of up to $250,000 for any info that leads to the arrest of these individuals.
The only
woman on the Most Wanted list is Ruja Ignatova, nicknamed the “CryptoQueen.” She is wanted “for her alleged leadership of a massive fraud scheme that affected millions of investors worldwide.” Born in Bulgaria, Ignatova was the founder of OneCoin, which marketed a “purported cryptocurrency.”
She “allegedly instructed victims to transmit investment funds to OneCoin accounts in order to purchase OneCoin packages, causing victims to send wire transfers representing these investments. Throughout the scheme, OneCoin is believed to have defrauded victims out of more than $4 billion,” the FBI said.
The U.S. State Department’s Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program is offering up to $5 million for information leading to her arrest or conviction.
The Most Wanted list was
established by the FBI in March 1950 in association with the country’s news media. As of Jan. 30, there have been 532 people mentioned in the list, out of which 496 have been captured, and 163 were the result of citizen cooperation.
Out of the 532 individuals on the list, 11 are women. The first woman, Ruth Eisemann-Schier, was added to the list in 1968 for kidnapping and other crimes.
