BERLIN Police have closed a chapter in the annals of German crime with the capture of a mysterious, bomb-making extortionist who went by the remarkable moniker of Dagobert -- German for Scrooge McDuck.

Dagobert had plagued German authorities -- and entertained ordinary Germans -- for nearly two years, with capers ranging from the deployment of a homemade, remote-controlled rail car for picking up ransom money to police chases through the sewers of Berlin.

Dagobert was a high-tech extortionist, who specialized in inventing zany electronic devices to collect money from his department store targets at pre-selected drop sites. European comics buffs had speculated that he was taking his ideas from the exploits of Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck's tight-fisted trillionaire uncle, drawn by the Disney artist Carl Barks. Police investigators reportedly combed about 6,000 pages of Barks' cartoon strips in their search for clues.

More seriously, the extortionist set off five explosions at branches of the Karstadt department store chain, causing about $ 6 million in damage. No one was seriously injured, but police had warned that it was only a matter of time before an explosion maimed or killed a bystander. The bomber had promised to stop the attacks if Karstadt paid him about $ 825,000.

Police identified their suspect Friday as Arno Funke, a 44-year-old unemployed sign painter from what used to be West Berlin, who is married and the father of a 3-year-old son.

They said Funke confessed when they captured him, while he was calling a Karstadt store from a pay phone in what used to be East Berlin. They also said they suspect he was behind an earlier, successful extortion of about $ 300,000 from the KaDeWe department store, Berlin's largest, in 1988.

Until Friday, police had fumbled through more than 30 attempts to capture Dagobert at the various money-drops he proposed, at a cost to taxpayers that was rumored to be as high as $ 20 million.

They collected about 3,000 leads, questioned more than 100 suspects, and put trained dogs, anti-terrorist squads, helicopters, psychics and even astrologers on the case. They offered a $ 60,000 reward for information, and set up a telephone line where potential tipsters could listen to Dagobert's voice on tape.

Michael Daleki, the Hamburg police officer who orchestrated the hunt, said in February that the case was the most difficult of his career. He acknowledged that he even had started dreaming about Dagobert at night.

He also said that despite his frustration, he found himself able to laugh at Dagobert.

There was a lot to laugh about: In one typical episode, for instance, Berlin police staked out 2,000 Berlin credit-card phone booths -- the technology-loving Dagobert was believed to favor credit-card calls -- only to be foiled when the bomber called in from a coin-operated pay phone in the suburbs -- across the street from the Walt Disney School.

Such whimsy, as well as the massive scope of the hunt, fascinated Germans, some of whom took to sporting T-shirts with the legend "I am Dagobert."

A telephone poll by a German broadcaster found that 61 percent of callers harbored "hidden sympathy" for the bomber.

Dagobert has been the subject of television shows, movie scripts, a novel, a popular song and a radio quiz show. There are even Dagobert garden gnomes.