By Paul Walsh

Minneapolis Star Tribune

A man who fled a Minnesota federal prison 25 years ago has been caught in Las Vegas thanks to facial recognition technology employed when he was seeking state identification in Nevada.

Robert F. Nelson, 64, of North Las Vegas, applied to renew his state identification card on June 5, according to a statement issued Tuesday by the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

“[DMV] investigators withheld the card after the DMV’s facial recognition system showed the same person had previously held a Nevada driver’s license in the name of Craig James Pautler,” the statement read.

Nelson was arrested at the DMV office, turned over to federal marshals on July 3 and is in a federal facility in Phoenix. Not only does he resume serving his remaining sentence, he’ll have additional time in custody for the escape, said DMV spokesman Kevin Malone.

Nevada has had the facial recognition tool since 2008, and the state credits it with making “a few dozen arrests in the first six months” it was in use and continuing to make several apprehensions every month, Malone said.

“The criminals didn’t know it was there,” he said. “Now, obviously, the word is out. … And hopefully this has cut down on identity fraud by just having it.”

Nelson had committed a string of violent felonies in Nevada under both names after escaping from the federal medical center prison in Rochester in connection with pulling off several counterfeiting crimes in the 1980s, the DMV statement continued.

Upon arriving in Nevada, he took on the name Pautler, got a Nevada commercial driver’s license and committed various crimes, among them robberies while armed, possession of stolen property, burglaries and using a weapon to break out of a holding facility in Nevada, the DMV statement read.

Nelson dropped his phony name roughly 10 years ago and went back to his true identity. In 2013, he obtained a Nevada ID card using the name Nelson, the DMV said.

—Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.