TUCSON, Ariz. -- A nationally-known Colorado fugitive wanted on charges of receiving stolen property was under arrest in Tucson, Ariz., Monday.

The U.S. Marshals Service said that James Arthur Hogue, 46, was wanted on three felony warrants stemming from an investigation last month by Colorado authorities. The San Miguel County Sheriff's Office said Hogue was wanted on three felony theft warrants -- for $100,000, $15,000 and $5,000 -- alleging theft by receiving.

The San Miguel County investigation also found thousands of dollars worth of high-end merchandise allegedly hidden in a secret room in Hogue's Telluride-area home in San Bernardo. Authorities said he is suspected in more than 50 burglaries in the Telluride area.

Authorities tracked him to Arizona and found him in a Tucson mall Sunday, surfing the Internet at a Barnes & Noble book store. Hogue was found with large sums of cash, credit cards and a passport, according to Mountain Village Police Investigator Robert Walraven.

"It was learned during the investigation that he may have been planning to go to Russia," Walraven said, adding that Hogue might have been awaiting a travel visa. Hogue is known to speak Russian.

He was booked into the Pima County jail and was awaiting extradition to San Miguel County in Colorado.

Hogue additionally is wanted in California. He is expected to waive extradition to Colorado.

Called a "serial imposter" by some, Hogue was the subject of a movie called "Con Man" in which the director called him " a brilliant imposter who embraced the American art of self-invention, fabricated a spectacular series of fictional identities for himself, and successfully conned his way into Princeton University."

He had entered Princeton University by posing as a self-taught ranch hand, authorities said and fraudulently took $22,000 in scholarship money from the Ivy League school. He then deferred his admission into Princeton for one year because he was serving time for theft in a Utah prison, according to a Pirinceton newsletter. He told Princeton officials that his mother had died in Europe and he needed the year off to attend to family matters. Hogue violated his parole when he left Utah to enter Princeton, the newsletter said.

Hogue’s extensive criminal record dates back decades. He was placed on probation in Austin, Texas, for check forgery in 1983. Two years later, at age 26, Hogue surfaced in Palo Alto, Calif., where, enrolling in high school as a 16-year-old orphan, he set a state record on the school’s track team. In 1991, Hogue enrolled at Princeton University. He was arrested in 1992 and served a 270-day sentence.

After his release from prison, Hogue was arrested for stealing gems and equipment from a lab he was working at in Somerville, Mass., and was sent back to New Jersey for breaking his parole. He was released from prison in New Jersey in 1997 and moved to Colorado, he was arrested in Aspen for bicycle theft. Priorto that, Hogue taught running at Jim Davis’s Cross Training Clinic, claiming to have a Ph.D. in bioengineering from Stanford University.

“He’s obviously a celebrity criminal,” San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters said of Hogue, who has been the subject of lengthy profiles in The New Yorker, New York Times and other newspapers. Hogue even has an entry in Wikepedia.

He was a student at Wyoming University between 1977 and 1979.