A 49-year-old man who is on the run from police in California for kidnapping and stealing from people he caught while working illegally as a bounty hunter is accused of doing the same things in metro Denver last year.
Bounty hunters are a special kind of person who works between police and regular people. People in these groups are given some of the legal power and access to information and tools that police officers with proper training have. In each state, the job requires different types of certifications. Some states have rules about what to wear and how to handle an arrest. Others only need someone to not have a felony record, sign something, and call the police before they can handcuff someone else.
But this bounty hunter’s alleged actions and the harm he is said to have caused to the people he left behind show that bounty hunters are not fully regulated in both California and Colorado. Maybe even the rest of the country.
Monday in Jefferson County, a trial for Jesse Wagner, who is also known as Jesse Nuñez, was set to begin. It has been moved to November now. In May 2023, he was caught for breaking his bail bond and had a two-week relationship with a woman. This led to twelve charges against him. Wagner is accused of keeping the woman out of jail and sometimes in his own care for two weeks instead of taking her straight to jail. That’s because he used her to make other charges, took her to dinner, and had an affair with her. According to Wagner’s arrest statement from the Lakewood Police Department, he even called the woman “baby” and offered to pay her for more sex.
The woman told Lakewood police that Wagner had told her he would put her in jail if she didn’t do what he wanted. Based on the statement, the relationship ended when Wagner broke down her door, hit her with a police baton while she was running away from him on the floor, and groped her sexually out of jealousy when she refused to go home with him.
Wagner gave detectives video of that arrest from a body-worn camera. He told the police that the woman tried to lock the door behind him and was known to have a gun on her.
Prosecutors don’t agree with his opinion. Wagner is being charged with sex crimes, kidnapping, attack, extortion, and trafficking people. He is also being charged with burglary because he is said to have stolen $2,400 from one of the suspects the woman led him to. He used the money to pay one of her fines.
A sting operation went wrong in a Commerce City hotel parking lot one month after the claimed Lakewood relationship ended. Wagner is now facing assault with a deadly weapon charges in Adams County. The affidavit for that case says that Wagner and two employees of his company, Fugitive Warrants LLC, tried to arrest a guy who was wanted for minor traffic violations. With the lie that the man’s ex-girlfriend’s car was broken down, they got him to come into the parking lot, where they tried to “box in” his pickup truck with their own cars. Investigators learned that the three men shot the truck driver after telling him they were police officers and the driver of the pickup tried to hit them with his truck in response.
The truck driver, on the other hand, said the men didn’t try to prove who they were. He put his own safety first and didn’t try to hit them with his truck.
Just like with the Lakewood arrest, video recordings made by cameras worn by the reward hunters backed up what the pickup truck driver said happened. The affidavit from Commerce City said that the video showed that none of the three bounty hunters said they were working as police officers during the meeting. The truck driver asked, “Why?” when one of the bounty hunters pointed a gun at him and told him to stop. In a hurried attempt to get away, the pickup hit three other cars, including two that belonged to the bounty hunters. After that, Wagner can be heard telling his partners to “shoot him, shoot him, shoot him.” Those partners pulled out their guns. The driver of the pickup was hurt when seven shots went through the door on the driver’s side.
The truck driver stopped trying to get away at this point and put both hands in the air, as shown in the video description in the statement. Wagner shocked the driver with a Taser as soon as the car door was opened. When the driver got to the ground, Wagner asked him why he didn’t do what they told him to do.
“Why did you try to kill us?” What’s wrong with you?”
The pick-up driver said, “Man, I was scared.” I saw you have a gun to my head. I have no idea who you are. Not a single “police” officer. “What the f***?”
After that, a detective from Commerce City looked into Wagner’s past and found that he had been convicted of several felonies. Because of these violations, Wagner shouldn’t be able to have a gun or be a qualified bounty hunter.
Wagner was caught in July 2023 for both of the crimes that happened in Colorado.