A criminal with 29 invented identities has been caught by the police in Saarland. The 53-year-old man was wanted with an international and German arrest warrant for various crimes, including fraud and document offences, the police in Wadern said on Tuesday. “For years, the man managed to evade police access because he had used a total of 29 different aliases,” the officials said in a statement.

A tip from the public finally put the police on the trail of the man. The 53-year-old was arrested without resistance in Losheim am See – he was driving a car with French license plates. During a search of a house in the community, the police officers found, among other things, forged certificates with university degrees, which the man probably never took, and other forged ID cards.