America's most wanted financial fugitive, found at the weekend holed up in a Hamburg hotel surrounded by a bank of computers, a bag of diamonds and a female accomplice, calmly tried to pass himself off to German police as an Englishman.

When it was clear that his ruse had failed, Mr Martin R. Frankel gave himself up without resistance, finally admitting to his captors: "You got me."

The capture of the 44-year-old Connecticut money manager ends a frustrating search by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for a man alleged to have defrauded US insurance companies of more than $300 million.

In what has become one of America's most vivid cases of alleged fraud, Mr Frankel four months ago and has eluded the FBI ever since.

The saga began eight years ago when, US federal prosecutors say, the native of Ohio started living on money he claimed to be managing for a handful of insurance companies in the southern US.

Duping lawyers, business executives and a string of women into believing he was a master money manager, He is alleged to have constructed a complex web of insurance purchases that began attracting the attention of regulators. By April, he sensed he would have to escape abroad to avoid closer scrutiny.

His last known whereabouts were Italy, where he was believed to be lying low until his sudden arrest on Saturday night in the Hotel Prem, a 54-room guest house overlooking Hamburg's Alster lake.