“Piss Bandit,” who taunts locals with bottles of urine, is California’s biggest threat

Someone pissed off California's rich.

Every few days, a mysterious figure wearing a mask and latex gloves carries bottles of urine into a wealthy neighborhood, carefully arranges them in a storage box, and then disappears into the night.

Known as the “Piss Bandit,” he has left his mark in Pasadena for the past six years with soda bottles, juice cartons and even gallon jugs filled to the brim with yellow liquid.

No one knows his identity and he taunts the locals with notes and drawings on his bottles: “human urine,” crude smiley faces or sometimes “HIV positive.”

The piss bandit sometimes strikes several times a week, with bottles appearing in the morning and disappearing at nightfall.

The bizarre behavior has been going on for so long that round rings have been etched into the paint of the supply box.

The city put a sharp metal lid on the box to stop the flow, but the bandits simply tore it off, leaving a fresh batch of bottles for themselves.

“It was a tug of war between the neighborhood and this guy,” said Grant Yasura, who launched a month-long investigation into the perpetrator with his partner, filmmaker Derek Milton.

The first video of her investigation received more than 600,000 views on TikTok. For Milton and Yasura, the bandit is not a vile vandal but a vigilante – a Robin Hood figure who has made the city of Pasadena his Little John.

“His dedication to his craft fascinated us,” Yasura told the Post.

But to the neighborhood – an oasis of expensive homes, swimming pools and carefully manicured lawns – the bandit is the biggest threat.

“I thought it was disgusting. I never thought of it as an art form in any way,” said Oscar Laguna, who until February owned a house near the perpetrator’s drop-off point.

Another neighbor posted a handwritten note for the bandit: “If I catch you leaving your piss here, I will make you drink every last drop!”…You have been warned!”

Milton and Yasura searched the drop site for answers, but their target never appeared. When they installed an infrared trail camera near the box, the pee-roll footage showed the bandit reaching his latex-gloved hand over a barrier wall and placing the bottles one by one, like candles on a cake.

Next, they left a message for the bandit: “I'm a big fan of your installation art… I think your work is on the same level as Banksy + Shepard Fairy.” The note contained a marker and interview questions for him to answer.

Not everyone agreed. While they were staking out the area, a man stopped angrily and asked why the two were hyping him up instead of trying to bring him to justice. “He said, 'Stop making it funny!' Do something about it!'” Uakasura told the Post. “But what should I do about it and throw a net at him?”

The bandit himself doesn't seem to care about his own fans. Not only did he ignore her note, but he also stole her camera. Later, the camera sent something to Milton's cloud storage account: a stunning ocean view identified in the metadata as Sunset Cliffs, San Diego – 126 miles from the piss box.

The bandit's next bottle contained a full one-gallon jug with a drawing of a demonic face. “He was on offense and playing with us,” Milton said in a video.

Finally, the TikTok detectives placed another camera on the side, this time with a voice intercom function. But the bandit ignored their communication efforts and simply stole the camera too.
The two then decided to clear up the case.

“His dedication to his craft fascinated us,” and we wanted to know why. But we realized he didn’t want to tell us why,” Yasura said. “Sometimes you just have to let an artist pee.”