The Thief Who Fleeced Millions From Surfers Is Locked Up

You’ll remember the incident. Snapt5 ringmaster Logan “Chucky” Dulien paddled out for a grief-management surf at the River Jetties before a meeting to plan his mother’s cremation.

While he was in the water, someone watched him hide his keys, broke into his house, then into his car, then into his phone, and finally into his bank accounts. In a matter of hours, $150,000 evaporated.

Through surveillance footage, Instagram broadcasts, and messages flooding in from surfers who’d been hit the same way, a pattern emerged that law enforcement had, until then, failed to notice or connect.

The crime ring must’ve operated on Surfline ratings and tide charts, haunting car parks from Malibu to San Diego and draining accounts while their victims were getting their SoCal wiggles in.

Dulien, accidentally deputised, refused to let it slide into an “unsolved” folder. He connected dots, outed faces, and never let go. We wrote about it, then CNN did too. Anderson Cooper nodded gravely at footage of surfers hiding keys in their wheels, a ritual that has now become the equivalent of leaving your wallet on the bonnet with a note saying please don’t.

Dulien’s campaign concluded as these things often do: an anticlimax of justice, a man in a suit, an apology delivered through tears.

This week, Moundir Kamil, 56, was sentenced to three years and eight months in federal prison for his role in the scheme. Nearly a million dollars was stolen, and hundreds of credit and debit cards photographed and misused. Kamil expressed remorse and spoke of his wife’s illness and his children, to no avail. He will likely be deported to Morocco after doing his time.

Thanks to Logan Dulien, justice has been served, and insurers will begin reimbursing the victims of the scheme. Though this reads as something like a happy ending, evil has a habit of reinventing itself. So don’t be a goose, and think twice about where you’re stashing those keys.