The Los Angeles Times reports that Michael Poret was arrested in Encino last week.
Police say that Poret vandalized numerous businesses along Ventura Boulevard and several private homes in Beverly Hills.
A witness account and private surveillance footage have depicted the vandal as a graying man in white gloves firing marbles at plate glass windows with a slingshot from the driver's seat of his car, then driving away in no apparent hurry.
Authorities believe that Poret could be connected to more than 20 vandalism incidents in Beverly Hills and more than 50 in Encino, as well as several other vandalism reports authorities have received in Van Nuys and Topanga Canyon.
The vandal appears to target businesses indiscriminately, hitting coffee shops, an autism treatment center and a salon. Luie Velasquez, a detective with the West Valley division of the Los Angeles Police Department, said the police's top theory is that the suspect sought excitement.
'Your guess is as good as mine', Velasquez said. 'For whatever reason, these individuals get some sort of thrill from smashing windows'.
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Alleged window-smashing broker may be suspect in 70 more cases
In the meantime, Reuters reports that Merrill Lynch's main broker force shrank during the second quarter, even as Bank of America on Wednesday trumpeted a steady rise in its overall financial adviser count.
Merrill said on Wednesday that it continued to add to its team of more than 17,500 financial advisers during the second quarter of 2012, in a press release announcing its latest earnings.
But a look at the fine print of the company's financial documents shows that the number of full-service Merrill brokers - those that generate the bulk of the revenue for Merrill Lynch's wealth management unit - actually fell during the second quarter.
image: © Nesster
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