Fugitive Has No Chip on His Shoulder : Burglaries: A friendly, convicted thief who deftly gutted university computers throughout the West is arrested near his produce market in Fullerton.

This is the story of a friendly fugitive who police say stole more than $1 million worth of computer chips over the past two years.

Avram Morar, 24, of Fullerton began his lucrative career in 1992, targeting University of California campuses and other schools in California, Oregon, Arizona and Washington state, according to Detective Mary Ranalli of the Cal State Fullerton police.

Morar, a Romanian national, allegedly sold the computer chips at swap meets and trade shows in Southern California and Las Vegas. With the proceeds, he bought a Mercedes-Benz and a Romanian produce market in Fullerton, Ranalli said.

Morar’s method of operation was unique: He would often scale the outside of buildings like the comic book character Spiderman, slip through unlocked windows, wrench open locked doors with lengths of pipe and remove the memory chips from computers, Ranalli said.

“This fellow knew exactly what he was after, exactly what he was looking for. He was quite gentle with the computers,” a Portland, Ore., police official once said. “He simply opened them and took the parts.”

Ranalli said she first came across Morar in May, 1992, when she arrested him in connection with the theft of about $50,000 worth of computer chips from Cal State Fullerton and Cal Poly Pomona.

She was so intrigued by Morar’s method of operation that she asked him if she could videotape him re-enacting a break-in, she said.

“He said, ‘Sure, I’ll do it for you,’ ” the detective said, describing Morar as “charming” and “relaxed.”

“You know that cartoon ‘Spiderman’? That’s how that guy is. It was unbelievable,” she said.

Ranalli said Morar’s congeniality was also unique. “You get people in custody who deny and deny, then you get someone like Avram and you say, ‘Now do you want to cooperate?’ and he says, ‘OK,’ ” she said.

Morar was convicted in October, 1992. He was fined $30,000 and sentenced to a work-furlough program in Fullerton. The following year, he left the program and burglarized Cal State Fullerton again, then fled to Washington state, Ranalli said.

In June, 1993, Morar and his wife left their 10-day-old infant with a nanny in Canada and returned to Fullerton. They shipped packages of clothes back to Canada for the baby, using a Fullerton return address, Ranalli said.

Two months later, Morar was arrested trying to steal computer chips at the University of Washington. He was charged with felony burglary and released on $100,000 bail. He jumped bail, returning with his wife to Canada, where they retrieved their baby and fled back to Fullerton, Ranalli said.

Morar started a fresh round of chip thefts, burglarizing UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego and Cal State Long Beach, Ranalli said. He also committed burglaries at the University of Portland in Oregon and at Arizona State University, she said.

Based in part on the videotape Ranalli had made of Morar in 1992, the schools realized who their suspect was. Warrants were issued for his arrest.

Last month, NBC’s “Prime Suspect” aired a story about Morar. When the Canadian nanny saw the show, she called California authorities to give them the Fullerton address, which turned out to be Morar’s produce store.

On Thursday at 10 a.m., Ranalli and her partner Tom Gehrls went to the store and found Morar’s Mercedes parked outside. A woman working there said she did not know where Morar was. But “we could hear movements in the ceiling tiles,” Ranalli said.

Suddenly, Morar popped out from the crawl space above the ceiling and bolted from the store. He dashed across a parking lot and through an apartment complex and jumped into a drainage ditch, which police officers surrounded.

“We caught him in a drainage ditch and gave him back,” said Fullerton Police Sgt. Roger White, whose department was called in to help. “He ran like a deer. We surrounded him and cut off his escape, and when he saw there was nowhere to run, he gave up.”

Ranalli took Morar, who had bleached his hair and grown a mustache, to the police station, where he cheerfully confessed to the thefts, she said.

He also offered some friendly advice: “You people got to learn to tighten up your security,” he told Ranalli.

Morar, who is being held without bail in Orange County Jail, is expected to be extradited to Washington state. He is also wanted in Arizona and Oregon, as well as in California.

Altogether, Ranalli estimates that Morar stole more than $1 million in computer chips.

“Now he isn’t going to be able to rip off the universities and cost taxpayers, and us, a lot of money,” she said.

Of the fugitive, Ranalli said: “I wouldn’t take him to dinner or a barbecue, but I like him because he cooperates, and we learn from him how the criminal mind works.”