HAVANA - Robert Vesco, the American fugitive who cooked up moneymaking schemes that allegedly involved everyone from Colombian drug lords to the families of U.S. presidents, died in Cuba and was buried almost six months ago, according to an official document.

A burial record at Havana's Colon Cemetery shows that a man with the same name and birthdate -- Dec. 4, 1935 -- died on Nov. 23 from lung cancer and was buried the next day in a private plot. He was 72.

In his lifetime, Vesco was accused of looting millions from a Swiss mutual fund, attempting to find U.S. planes for Libya and lying about inventing a drug that he claimed could cure AIDS.

He was linked to Latin American presidents, Soviet spies, smugglers of high-technology equipment -- even the CIA.

And he was good at hiding.

Writer Arthur Herzog, who once interviewed Vesco, noted the infamous con man had long employed elaborate schemes to escape justice.

U.S. officials in Cuba said Monday they were unaware of Vesco's death.

Vesco evaded American justice during a quarter-century odyssey through the Caribbean and Central America after fleeing the U.S. in 1972.

It was Cuban courts that finally put him in prison in 1996, convicting him of marketing a drug without government permission. His business partner was Donald A. Nixon Jr., the nephew of former President Richard Nixon.

Vesco was still wanted in the United States on charges of looting $224 million from investors in a Swiss-based mutual stock fund.