An alleged bounty hunter who authorities said was on the lam on allegations of unlawfully detaining two people and burglarizing a home in San Diego County earlier this year has been arrested in Riverside County on unrelated charges.
Jesse Wagner, 47, who was described by authorities last week as a fugitive who owns the bounty hunting company Fugitive Warrants, was booked into the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside on Tuesday, jail records show.
Riverside County court records show that prosecutors charged him last year with assault with a deadly weapon, possession of body armor while having a previous violent felony conviction and being a felon while possessing a stun gun. Details on the allegations in that case, which stems from an incident that allegedly occurred in September of 2020, were not immediately available.
According to the California Department of Insurance, Wagner and others arrested a fugitive in National City on June 10, then burglarized his home.
The defendants then allegedly tracked down their suspect’s girlfriend, who was not wanted for any crimes.
While she was in a car being driven by her father, the defendants allegedly made a traffic stop on the car, then took the girlfriend and her father back to her house. Wagner and his team “falsely imprisoned them in an attempt to locate the fugitive’s firearms,” according to the Department of Insurance.
Wagner, who also has a 2006 robbery conviction out of San Bernardino County, faces charges in San Diego County that include kidnapping, false imprisonment, and burglary. He’s also due in a Riverside courtroom on Nov. 30 in his other case.
Last week the department announced the arrests of two of Wagner’s co-defendants, Daniel Johnathan Hawks, 42, and Annette Bianca Garcia, 35, both of whom are accused of taking part in the San Diego County incident. They pleaded not guilty in a Chula Vista courtroom last week.