# grep -ir fail2ban /var/log/messages
Sep 20 05:16:06 loghost <28>fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 78.129.232.126
Sep 20 13:22:41 loghost <28>fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 93.205.114.146
Sep 20 13:22:41 teg <28>fail2ban.actions: WARNING [ssh] Ban 93.205.114.146
#
"" is, according to http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_Order_Mark, the Byto Order Mark for UTF8, not sure where "<28>" is from.
It's a duplicate of #3071865