Bounty Collector

Should a crime - or series of crimes - carry a long outstanding bounty within a particular hold, a bounty collector approaches the Dragonborn while he or she is traveling the roads of Skyrim. The bounty collector is a high-level guard who tries to arrest the Dragonborn, if they have a high bounty in a hold.

Equipment
They are typically geared with full steel plate and enchanted weaponry; not to be taken lightly. He/She will approach you and will give you the option to pay off your bounty or not, and if you don't pay will commence to attack you.

Bounty removal

 * Paying off the bounty will clear your criminal status within that hold and thus prevent further attacks or arrest attempts by the guards when a player is in a the city where the original bounty existed. However, sometimes the bounty will never clear. Results are not immediate. Be wary of fast traveling to an associated city after paying this collector (this may be because the bounty collector has not immediately returned to the hold and cleared your name).
 * I have come up with a possible cure for finding the markarth bounty collector. first of all you need to teleport to karthwasten and arrive during the day. at the bottom of the road there will sometimes be 2 farmers walking the road. talk to them until it gives you the option to pay them 5 gold for a tip. after youve done that you need to turn around to the road heading to the city itself and head down it to the top of that dinky little incline, so you can see down the rest of the road. you should see the bounty collector about 10 seconds later, but if that doesnt work then teleport away then come back. when you find him you have to make sure the amount of money you have is twice of what you owe. or else it will say "i dont have the money". once you pay him he WILL rip you off and only take a couple hundred to the jarl. this is why you need to do this untill your bounty is below 1000. once that happens you can pay the guards to completely eliminate your bounty. (note: you may spend almost 100,000 gold doing this. after all its just a glitch.)

Bugs
On rare occasions, the bounty collector will still accost you if you paid your bounty in an outlying city. (Such as a bounty in Whiterun Hold being paid while in Riverwood.) Sometimes in the dialogue options it will say "Pay 0 Gold". Also on rare occasions, you may still have your bounty even after you have paid the Bounty Collector.
 * This can also occur randomly if the player has no bounty and never been wanted in that hold for a bounty collector to appear and ask to pay 0 gold.
 * another bug may be that the bounty collector rarely even shows up at all, even though you have waited a long time.
 * when the bounty collector finds you on that rare accasion, it may not even give you the option of paying the fine. this bug "may" not "will" be a cause of your money amount not being twice your bounty amount, in other words the amount to money owed ratio not being a cirtain percentage.