The LAPD are on the hunt for a man who fled down the fire escape from his penthouse in downtown Los Angeles ala ‘Jason Bourne’ leaving weapons, counterfeiting equipment, and passports in various names. From the Los Angeles Times:

It started 11 days ago when a resident at an upscale downtown L.A. high-rise tower smelled fumes coming from neighboring apartment. Firefighters knocked on the neighbor’s door, but he refused to let them in.

They called police, who broke down the door of the penthouse just as the man inside was escaping through a back window and down a fire escape with multiple duffel bags over his shoulder.

“He escaped like Jason Bourne,” LAPD Deputy Chief Mike Downing of the Counter-terrorism Bureau, referring to the movie spy character. What they found next has begun a week-long mystery.

The apartment contained sophisticated counterfeiting equipment as well as a cache of weapons, including an AK-47. They also found stacks of counterfeit $100 bills totaling $15,000 and a camera tripod.

But detectives’ interest was really heightened when they looked outside the window and saw that the penthouse balcony had a spot-on view of the U.S. Federal Reserve building on Grand Avenue. Detectives now are searching for the suspect, who leased the $3,400-a-month penthouse, paying in advance with stacks of cash.

Detectives aren’t sure what Brian Alexik, a 33-year-old New Jersey man, was up to, and what role, if any, the Federal Reserve might have played in his schemes.

The fake $100 dollar bills found in the penthouse are said to be extremely good forgeries by those who had seen them.

“There were many levels of criminality,” Detective Downing said. “He’s funding a criminal enterprise. He’s dabbling in narcotics, he’s manufacturing weapons parts. But what is it? Was there a bigger plan? What was his intent? We have a lot of questions for him when he is arrested.”

A room with a view to one big mystery (Los Angeles Times)