What’s wrong with making friends on Facebook? Nothing — unless you happen to be a fugitive from US justice, living the good life at a Mexican holiday resort after allegedly stealing more than $200,000 (£125,000) through a bank scam in Seattle.

But Maxi Sopo, 26, a native of Cameroon, didn’t think twice before logging on to the popular social networking site and making a ‘friend request’ to a man he had met while out drinking in a Cancun nightclub.

Unfortunately for Sopo, he had no idea that the man in question was a former US Justice Department official.

Now Sopo is languishing in a Mexico City jail, awaiting extradition to the US on fraud charges — a crime for which he could be punished with up to 30 years behind bars, if he’s found guilty.

Alas, it’s too late for him to ‘unfriend’ the man who ruined his otherwise perfect getaway.

Investigators had spent months looking for Sopo on websites such as Facebook and MySpace, with no success. But when the fugitive finally opened an account, it was immediately spotted by a Secret Service agent. Although Sopo’s settings were set to ‘private’, his list of friends was public, and the agent began to scroll through the names — quickly discovering that one of them belonged to an ex-employee of the US government.

The agent sent the former official a message and asked if they could speak over the phone.

"We figured this was a person we could probably trust to keep our inquiry discreet," explained one of the prosecutors involved with the case.

The gambit worked. The former Justice Department employee had met Sopo only a few times while nightclubbing, and had no idea the 26-year-old was on the run. With the help of this Facebook friend, investigators soon found out where Sopo lived and gained access to his profile page, which he’d updated with photographs and blog postings. Within a month, Sopo had been arrested by the Mexican authorities and sent to a holding facility in the capital, pending extradition.

His last status update? “Loving it.”

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