Published Aug. 4, 2026at6:00am
“Lucky Luke” Brugnara, a San Francisco real estate developer turned art thief and tax evader, appeared in court Friday following his arrest in late July in a Daly City hotel after threatening to “shoot people on sight.”
Brugnara, who was carrying a gun at the time of his arrest, has been on the radar of the U.S. Marshals Service since February, when he failed to appear at a bail hearing in a fraud case related to COVID relief funds and a judge issued a bench warrant.
But little of his extensive criminal history came up Friday.
“I am being harshly confined, and I can’t endure it,” he said in court, characterizing the charges against him as a “small, white-collar, insignificant matter, for a couple hundred thousand dollars.”