Inside the US Marshal manhunt for long-missing fugitive behind $350 million bank swindle

John Ruffo was scheduled to start serving a 17-year prison sentence when he vanished. ABC News got unprecedented access for the podcast "Have You Seen This Man."

This report is part of Season 2 of the ABC News podcast, "Have You Seen This Man?," hosted by "The View's" Sunny Hostin. It follows the U.S. Marshals' ongoing mission to find John Ruffo, who engineered one of the most outlandish frauds in U.S. history, vanished in 1998 and has never been found. A four-part Hulu Original limited series on the global search for Ruffo is currently in production from ABC News Longform. MORE HERE An unassuming Brooklyn computer salesman who in 1998 committed one of the nation’s most outlandish bank frauds before making a brazen escape is now the subject of an intensifying global manhunt by the U.S. Marshals. John Ruffo swindled banks out of more than $350 million and was scheduled to start serving a 17-year prison sentence when he vanished. The U.S. Marshals have labeled Ruffo one of their 15 most wanted fugitives and have provided ABC News unprecedented access to their manhunt for the second season of the podcast "Have You Seen This Man," launching today. The case has for decades baffled investigators, who never fully understood why Ruffo was granted the unusual privilege of being allowed to self-report for such a hefty prison term. On the day he was supposed to show up at prison, he rented a Ford Taurus, drove to Queens, New York, to turn in the ankle monitor he had been wearing, took $600 out of an ATM, left his car in long term parking at JFK airport, and disappeared.