A BOUNTY hunter was claiming a $150,000 (£90,000) reward yesterday after the fugitive Max Factor heir, Andrew Luster, was captured in Mexico nearly six months after fleeing his “date rape” trial in Ventura County, California.

Duane “Dog” Chapman, the self-proclaimed “greatest bounty hunter in the world”, had been hunting Luster, 39, in the hope of earning 15 per cent of his forfeited $1 million bail. The money, like all Luster’s income, had been taken from his family’s trust fund.

Mr Chapman, owner of Da Kine Bail Bonds in Honolulu, Hawaii, has adopted the motto: “Six men can carry you, or twelve men can judge you.” The bearded bounty hunter’s website pictures him with a blond mullet, a bodybuilder’s T-shirt and a pistol holster.

As long ago as April, Mr Chapman, 50, wearing his trademark leather trousers and gold rattlesnake-skin boots, told the Los Angeles Times: “I’m going to catch him, I’m going to bring him in.”

FBI agents went to the Mexican holiday resort of Puerto Vallarta yesterday to confirm that the captured man was Luster. It is thought that Mr Chapman had found the fugitive in a nightclub.

He and his two associates apparently chased Luster in his car before dawn and managed to stop him. A fight in the street followed as the bounty hunters tried to drag their quarry from his car. Alerted by neighbours, police arrested Luster, the three bounty hunters and two journalists, all foreigners detained on charges of being in Mexico illegally.

Luster is the great-grandson of Max Factor Jr, the late Hollywood cosmetics magnate.

“This has been a long hunt,” Beth Smith, Mr Chapman’s assistant, from Honolulu, said, adding that it was common for bounty hunters to be interviewed by police immediately after a big capture.

Mr Chapman, a former convict and Texas motorcycle gang member, has admitted to previously hauling fugitives from Mexico to the US in the boot of his car.

Luster, whose unshaven mugshot has been posted on Mr Chapman’s website under the “Most Wanted” section, was convicted and sentenced in absentia to 124 years in prison for multiple counts of rape, poisoning and drug posession.

“The chances of getting Luster back may be slim,” Judge Ken Riley said at the time of his disappearance.

Ventura County prosecutors claimed that Luster raped three women at his beach house in Mussel Shoals, near Santa Barbara, between 1996 and 2000, after giving them the drug GHB. Luster, a self-confessed “surf dude”, said that he was being persecuted by conservatives for his alternative lifestyle, which involved using GHB to get high.

But during a search of Luster’s home, FBI agents found videotapes of the Max Factor heir having sex with women who appeared to be either asleep or unconscious. In one tape played in court after he disappeared, Luster was seen on camera having sex with a woman and pronouncing: “That’s exactly what I like in my room: a passed-out beautiful girl.”

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