A lawyer says fugitive Seattle real-estate developer Michael Mastro and his wife have been arrested in France.
Mastro's attorney, James Frush, tells The Seattle Times he learned of the arrests Wednesday.
The couple had been on the lam for 16 months. They vanished after a bankruptcy judge ordered them to turn over two giant diamond rings valued at $1.4 million.
Mastro was wanted for contempt of court, and he could also face criminal charges after his highly leveraged real-estate empire evaporated in 2009 after the market crash.
The most recent estimate of his debt to unsecured creditors is $250 million, and court-appointed trustee James Rigby has said those creditors will be lucky to get back more than a few pennies on the dollar.
