Bloomberg — Residents of Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana district say the Frenchman who identified himself as Michel fit right in. He dined at cafes, walked on the beach and chatted politely with the locals.“He seemed totally normal, just another foreigner trying to make his dream come true in Rio,” said Maria Jose Quirino, 67, owner of a bar where Michel often sat alone under a yellow awning, drinking beer while he read.

That was before Brazil’s federal police nabbed him. Michel turned out to be four-time convicted murderer Cesare Battisti, a fugitive from Italy. He was apprehended March 18 while on his way to meet a woman who travelled from France to give him $12,000 in cash to help pay his living expenses.

Battisti, 52, joins a long list of criminals who have sought refuge in Rio de Janeiro or neighbouring Sao Paulo. Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, UK train robber Ronnie Biggs and American murder suspect Jesse James Hollywood, one of the youngest people to appear on the FBI’s Ten Most-Wanted List, all fled to Brazil.

Dreams of disappearing in a carefree paradise and a sense that laws aren’t rigidly enforced draw the fugitives. Corruption makes it easy to obtain false documents, and a thriving underground economy allows criminals to stay under cover for years, said Luiz Flavio Soares, 49, a criminal law professor at South University of Santa Catarina in Florianopolis.

“Brazil is a natural magnet,” said Senator Romeu Tuma, 75, who worked for the country’s federal police for 50 years. “It’s easier for foreign criminals to blend in here because they don’t need to speak the language and can live with fake documents.”

About 30 percent of workers in Brazil aren’t registered with the Labour Ministry, said Juan Jensen, an economist at Tendencias Consultoria in Sao Paulo. Only half of the population has a bank account, said Erivelto Rodrigues, a banking consultant at Sao Paulo-based Austin Asis.

Battisti hid out in Rio for almost three years, recently living in a studio in a rundown neighbourhood near the beach. He had been convicted in absentia for killing a jeweller, a prison guard, a policeman and a right-wing militant in the 1970s. The Italian government is seeking a quick extradition.

Mengele, the Nazi doctor known for experimenting on people in concentration camps, spent his final years in Brazil. His body was discovered on a farm in Sao Paulo state in 1985, six years after he drowned, said Tuma, who led the investigation that identified the German doctor’s remains.

Biggs escaped after being convicted for his part in a 1963 crime known as the “Great Train Robbery.” He was part of a gang of 15 who robbed a UK mail train of $2.6 million, then valued at $7.28 million.

Biggs lived openly in Rio for three decades, even earning a living from his celebrity by giving tours of his house. He avoided extradition in 1974 because his Brazilian girlfriend was pregnant, giving him immunity under the law at the time. Biggs voluntarily returned to Britain in 2001 and is in prison there.

Many fugitives think having a Brazilian child means they can evade arrest, but they’re too late. The law blocking the extradition of foreign parents of Brazilian children was repealed in the 1990s, Soares said.

“Criminals outside of Brazil think they can just come here, marry a Brazilian or have a kid and have a sweet life going to the beach,” said Wanderley Martins, a federal police chief in Rio de Janeiro who works with Interpol.

Martins led the team that arrested Hollywood, an alleged drug dealer charged with helping carry out the kidnapping and murder of a Los Angeles teenager in 2000. Hollywood was just 20 years old when he made the FBI’s Most-Wanted list.

Hollywood, whose story inspired the 2006 movie “Alpha Dog,” was captured in 2005 at a resort near Rio where he surfed and taught English. His girlfriend was pregnant when he was sent back to the US, where he’s awaiting trial.

Gloria Trevi, the Mexican pop singer accused and later acquitted of child abuse, was arrested in 2000 in Rio. Trevi gave birth in a Brazilian jail in February 2002 and was extradited to Mexico that December.

The federal police usually don’t pursue fugitives unless requested because they have so many serious local crimes, said Glorivan de Oliveira, vice director of the Interpol office in Brazil.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has increased the federal police force by 35 percent to 13,000 since 2003, aiding the hunt, Soares said. The Supreme Court has ruled on 12 extraditions this year, and has 86 pending.

The image of Brazil as a haven for criminals is propagated by popular films, said Lucia Murat, 58, who produced a 2006 documentary on how Brazil is portrayed in foreign movies. Runaways plan escapes to Rio in films such as “The Lavender Hill Mob” and “A Fish Called Wanda.”

“Brazil has been seen as tropical paradise for impunity since its discovery,” Murat said. “The cultural industry only reinforces that view.”