[imagesource: US Marshals]

Spending 23 years on the run from the US Marshals Service takes a high degree of skill.

In the late 1990s, John Ruffo (pictured above with his wife Linda) was convicted of a $350 million bank fraud scheme and handed a 17-and-a-half year prison sentence.

When the time came to show up to start that sentence, Ruffo was nowhere to be found, and neither was about $13 million of the bank fraud dosh.

Armed with that money, and a reputation for being a “master manipulator” Ruffo withdrew money from an ATM in New York, drove a rental car to John F. Kennedy International Airport, and vanished.

He’s now the subject of the podcast Have You Seen This Man? which has caused a surge in interest in his case.

The only possible sighting since his disappearance on November 9, 1998, reports CNN, was at a baseball game in 2016:

In September 2016, a tip came in to investigators that Ruffo, now 66, had been at a Boston Red Sox and LA Dodgers baseball game in Los Angeles a month earlier, on August 5, 2016, and that he was sitting about four rows up from home plate wearing a blue shirt…

A video clip from the game confirmed a man fitting Ruffo’s description was sitting several rows behind home plate.

That’s possibly him in the blue shirt just above the batter. Not the best place to sit when you’re on the run from authorities.

The quality of this video clip is poor, but gives you a sense of the footage:

@USMarshalsHQ #JohnRuffo pic.twitter.com/u8tDU8qurw

— DB Cooper (@dbcooper2021) October 6, 2021

Following on from the tip, the search intensified:

Investigators were able to narrow the seat down to Section 1 Dugout Club, Row EE, Seat 10. But even though they found the seat and identified the person who bought the seats, they haven’t been able to identify the man in the blue shirt.

Investigators say if the man in the blue shirt is Ruffo, he will likely be using an alias.

The potential sighting was reported by Carmine Pascale, Ruffo’s cousin, who was watching the game on TV:

“I’m watching and right behind home plate, they did a close up of the batter and there’s Johnny. And I said, ‘Holy Christ, there he is.'”

“Brazen, confident. ‘They ain’t gonna get me. Catch me if you can.’ “

Incredibly, despite hundreds of leads from across the US and the world in the past 23 years, the last confirmed sighting of Ruffo was at that New York ATM in 1998.

The US Marshals have now gone public with the information regarding the possible 2016 sighting in the hopes of tracking him down.

His ability to tell a tall tale would have held him in good stead:

“He is known to be computer savvy and enjoys fine wines, gambling, and nice hotels,” the [US Marshals] news release said. “He is reportedly lactose-intolerant. Ruffo was known to be a storyteller, someone who liked to stretch the truth, and had a desire to impress others.”

Because of his time as a businessman in New York, investigators say, Ruffo has a variety of international connections. He had traveled to Aruba and showed interest in Italy, where he was known to have traveled in the past.

The US Marshals have also translated their media release into seven languages and distributed it overseas, saying there’s a good chance he may now live abroad.

Perhaps they should up their reward of $25 000 for information leading to his arrest.

[source:cnn]