Lewes man featured in hunt for fugitive
In 2016, a cousin of John Ruffo thought he saw him sitting behind home plate at a Dodgers game. But it turned out that portly, mustachioed, balding man wasn’t one of the nation’s most-wanted men, missing since 1998, when he walked away from a 17-year sentence for a $350 million bank fraud conviction – one of the largest in U.S. history.
The real Ruffo is still at large, and nowadays is the focus of a two-part Hulu series that dropped March 24.
Lewes resident Barry Boright was put on Ruffo’s trail in 1999 as a member of the U.S. Marshals’ Fugitive Task Force. Boright recalls his years of trying to find Ruffo in the Hulu series “Have You Seen This Man?” – also an ABC podcast by the same name.
“He’s very unremarkable,” Boright said, speculating that Ruffo’s unassuming, average looks and short stature were an asset that helped him easily blend in and disappear.
A computer salesman from Brooklyn, Ruffo built a business on contacts and know-how, eventually realizing there was money for the taking. He and a partner contrived a scheme that won over more than one bank, using their computer business as a backbone and convincing lenders that they were in a super-secret, smokeless tobacco product with tobacco giant Phillip Morris. Ruffo also bragged about contacts he had with the FBI, CIA and other government agencies. Ruffo’s former employees said they saw Russian computer programmers in the office, and Ruffo’s former wife recalled socializing with Soviet Union officials.
Together, Ruffo and his partner made off with $350 million before they were caught. About $13 million has never been recovered.
While Ruffo’s partner was convicted and did prison time, Ruffo was given slightly different treatment. He was out on a $10 million bond – money raised from collateralizing homes owned by his mother and other relatives – and he was allowed to turn himself in on his own before heading to prison. He turned in his ankle bracelet, left for the airport, and has never been seen since. Ruffo’s relatives lost their homes when he jumped bail.
"The last recording we have is an ATM for Ridgeway; he takes out about $600, and from then we haven't had any confirmed sightings of Ruffo," said a marshal during one of the ABC shows.
An array of shell companies and aliases Ruffo created to hide his money and identity have compounded the difficulty in finding him, Boright said.
Ruffo remains on the U.S. Marshals’ top 15 fugitive list. There is a $25,000 reward for information that leads to his arrest.
“If you look back at the history of the case … him being allowed to voluntarily surrender, none of that makes any sense at all,” Boright said. “It just leads you to believe there is more going on than just a simple fraud case. I’ve never seen someone sentenced to the amount of prison time he was sentenced to being able to voluntarily surrender.”
Over the years, Boright said investigators exhausted any connection with his family, and have followed numerous leads on Ruffo’s whereabouts that include the Caribbean, South America, Russia, Switzerland and Italy. An Italian-American with plenty of contacts in the old country, Ruffo has been linked to Sicily and the Adriatic coast. But Boright doubts Ruffo is in Italy, and also doubts Ruffo’s family has any idea where he went.
“The government took all their houses, so I don’t believe the speculation that he is in Italy and the family knows where he is. If the family could have got in touch with him, they would have killed him,” Boright said.
He still thinks Ruffo will be found.
“I think he’ll be found eventually. We have a lot more technology than we had when I started working the case,” Boright said. “We didn’t even have cellphones when I started.”
