Luke "Lucky Luke" Brugnara fenced off six acres of public trail at Thornton State Beach in Daly City on a 1/24th ownership stake. The beach confrontation drew the federal prosecutors already chasing him over a $422,000 pandemic-relief fraud — and after six months as a fugitive, he's now in custody.

For a few weeks last January, the trailhead at the entrance to Thornton State Beach — where the bluffs drop toward the Pacific at the Daly City end of San Mateo County — was chained shut. A chain-link fence cut off roughly six acres and the footpaths people had used for years to reach the sand. A sign went up in a hand that left no ambiguity: no trespassing, owner armed with 9mm gun. Trespassers will be shot.

The man behind it was Luke Brugnara, the San Francisco real-estate investor known in court filings and headlines as "Lucky Luke." According to ABC7's Dan Noyes, who has tracked the case since winter, Brugnara had acquired a 1/24th deed interest in the land in late 2025 — one twenty-fourth — and fenced the whole of it anyway, without a permit from Daly City or the California Coastal Commission. The other owners were furious. So were the dog walkers. One couple told police he threatened to shoot and kill them if they came near the line; when officers arrived on January 21, they found a 9mm Glock in an unlocked case on the front seat of his vehicle. He was arrested on felony threats and felon-in-possession charges. Daly City later pulled the fence out.

That beach confrontation drew federal attention Brugnara did not want. He already had an open case in the Northern District of California — indictment 3:24-cr-00277-MMC, nine counts of wire fraud and three of money laundering — over a roughly $422,000 pandemic relief loan. Prosecutors accuse him of lying about the size of his company, its number of employees and its payroll, and of using the money to buy a house. In February he skipped a hearing to revoke his bond, and a judge issued a bench warrant.

For about six months he was a fugitive. Last week, U.S. Marshals surrounded a house in the Sunset District; prosecutors say he tried to climb onto the church roof next door, which he denies. At a contentious hearing this week before Magistrate Judge Lisa Cisneros — Brugnara interrupting, invoking his blood pressure, calling himself an innocent man — the marshals escorted him back to jail. He will stay there until the case ends. His next court date is in two weeks.

It is not his first federal stretch. Brugnara was convicted in 2015 of defrauding a Tennessee art dealer of some $11 million in works, a case that included a literal escape from the San Francisco federal building and ended in a seven-year sentence.

Walk down to Thornton Beach today and the fence is gone. The trail is open. The man who tried to close it is the one now locked up.