Walter Lee Williams
The FBI says Williams traveled to several countries in Asia and the Pacific to have sex with boys between the ages of 9 and 17. FBI

Mexican authorities arrested Walter Lee Williams, one of the FBI's top 10 most wanted, as he drank coffee in a café in the Quintana Roo resort city of Playa del Carmen. Williams, 64, a former tenured professor who taught anthropology, history and gender studies at the University of Southern California until February 2011, faces charges of sexual exploitation of children, traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places, according to the LA Times.

Armando Gaspar Torres, the public prosecutor handling the case, said during a press conference that Mexican authorities worked in collaboration with the FBI to locate Williams in the café on Tuesday night. "It is not known what he did for work, but he had a residence in Cancun," Torres said, according to CNN.

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An indictment alleges that Williams traveled from Los Angeles to the Philippines in January 2011 to engage in sexual acts with two 14-year-old boys he met online in 2010, said the US Department of Justice in a Monday statement in which he was declared the 500th person named on the list. The FBI said he "engaged in sexual activity via Internet webcam sessions with these boys and expressed a desire to visit them in the Philippines to have sex". While in the Philippines, Williams allegedly had sex with both boys and took explicit photos of one of them. He fled Los Angeles about a week after returning, as agents had called him in for questioning. Bureau officials told the LA Times they had identified at least 10 alleged victims between the ages of 9 and 17, many of whom live abroad - Williams has traveled extensively or lived in a number of southeast Asian and Polynesian countries, such as the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. A special agent from the FBI told CBS that he had analyzed computers and a camera belonging to Williams and found child pornography.

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Williams is a Fulbright award winner who has been recognized in the past for his work with the LGBT community. The main focus of his research, according to the LA Times, was on sexuality in the Southeast Asia/Pacific region.

According to Gaspar Torres, the former professor will be put at the disposition of Mexico's National Migration Institute to be extradited.

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Williams was also affiliated with the Buddhist Universal Association of Los Angeles, according to the FBI.

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