A wanted Albanian murder suspect was arrested on the Upper East Side on Tuesday in connection with two New Jersey bank robberies that totaled about $500,000, authorities said yesterday.

“We had been chasing him for a while. He was hard to get,” an FBI source said of Shpend Mazari, 26, who hails from the town of Puke. “He would turn his cellphone off and would just turn it on for short periods of time.”

Mazari, 26, was charged yesterday in New Jersey federal court only with illegal entry into the United States.

He remains a person of interest in the bank jobs and is also wanted by Interpol in a 2004 murder in Albania.