Italian police were able to catch a top mafia fugitive who had been on the run for almost two decades thanks to the help of the Google Maps app, according to Reuters.

Nearly two years of investigations, Gioacchino Gammino, 61, was tracked down in Galapagar, Spain, where he lived under a fake name.

A Google Maps street view picture portraying an individual who looked like Gammino in front of a fruit shop was a main key in carrying out a deeper investigation.

Nicola Altiero, deputy director of the Italian anti-mafia police unit (DIA), said "The photogram helped us to confirm the investigation we were developing in traditional ways."

Altiero said Gammino is currently under custody in Spain.

In 2002, Gammino, a member of a Sicilian mafia group dubbed Stidda, escaped Rome's Rebibbia jail and in 2003 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder committed several years earlier.