Fugitive Max Factor heir held in Mexico

Andrew Luster, the heir to the Max Factor cosmetics empire who vanished during his trial on multiple rape charges, has been captured in Mexico and is expected to be deported immediately, his prosecutors said yesterday.

Initial reports said he was tracked to the beach resort of Puerto Vallarta by a professional bounty-hunter hoping for a large slice of Luster's forfeited $1m (£595,000) bail.

Luster had been accused of luring women to his oceanside home in southern California, feeding them the date-rape drug GHB, then videotaping them while having what court documents was "sex relations" with them. The tapes led to his conviction and sentence to 124 years in prison on multiple counts of rape, poisoning and drug possession.

But by the time the jury in Ventura County court returned its verdict in January, Luster had vanished. The court had granted provisional release on bail, highly unorthodox for such serious crimes. A house search revealed empty clothes drawers, artefacts cleared off shelves and a stack of unopened mail.

Although his passport was confiscated, he is likely to have crossed into Mexico using just his driving licence, as permitted for short trips to the border town of Tijuana.

His case drew international attention because of his wealth and family connections, and also because of the relative rarity of successful prosecutions involving date-rape drugs. Usually, victims have no memory of what has happened, but three women were prosecution witnesses.

One had been with her boyfriend on the night in question, in the summer of 2000, and between them they remembered enough to go to police. When officers raided the Luster home, they found the tapes, including one in which he boasted his ultimate fantasy was to have "a strawberry blonde passed out on my bed". The other witnesses realised what had happened to them only when they saw the tapes.