Police say an organized crime ring targeted Southern California surfers, stealing phones and wallets to drain bank accounts and max out credit cards. @nickwattcnn reports. pic.twitter.com/IuTEypccp5
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) March 26, 2025
A group of well-organized, high-tech thieves stole over a million dollars from more than a hundred surfers in Southern California. Ultimately, it was the surfers who were able to help bring them to justice.
The story even reached CNN, which recently published a video report featuring Snapt’s Logan Dulien, one of the victims who played a key role in identifying the thieves. On August 12, 2024, Dulien stashed his car key in a side yard of his property in Newport Beach while he went for a surf. When he returned, he discovered that the key was missing. The thieves had broken into his yard, located the hidden key, and stolen his phone, key, and wallet.
Dulien, who was grieving the recent passing of his mother just two days before, eventually got online to discover that the thieves had hacked his phone, drained his accounts, and run up huge bills on his credit cards. All in all, it was a $150,000 hit.
“I’m just sitting there, kind of deteriorating, like, emotionally,” Dulien told CNN. “I just watched my mom die 48 hours before and it’s been a really rough year and a half. And then this stuff is happening to me. I was basically like, I don’t give a f**k who this is, I’m gonna do everything I can to make them pay.”
Luckily, Dulien had footage of one of the thieves from a security camera on his house. He sent the footage to a tech-savvy friend who cleaned it up, and then he posted it to social media. STAB picked up the story and messages started pouring in of other Southern California surfers who had been hit by the same scheme. The list of victims included pros like Tyler Gunter, Taro Watanabe, and Reef McIntosh.
“All these surfers started DMing to me: ‘The same thing happened to me!’” said Dulien. “I’m like, ‘This is what these guys do — they rob surfers!’”
Dulien was turning over every bit of information that came in to the police. Authorities were also onto this crime syndicate but lacked the evidence needed to put them away. The same day that Dulien was robbed, they hit three other surfers for a grand total of more than a quarter million dollars. Even after this information was made public, the criminals brazenly kept targeting the same spots and robbing surfers while they were in the water. They became known on social media for sometimes driving a Bentley while they committed their crimes.
Eventually, the group was caught red-handed by a security camera on the house of Dulien’s neighbor. Now the police had the break-ins, license plates, faces, and stolen items all recorded. The cops even got one of the thieves to flip on his accomplices. He told police that they “focused on vehicles belonging to surfers as the surfers would be out on the water for significant periods of time and would not be able to take their keys with them.”
The way the scam worked also came to light. One thief would watch surfers stash their keys before they paddled out. Another accomplice on the beach would confirm that the surfer had entered the water, and the coast was clear to steal the key and break into the car. Once they had the wallet and phone, they passed it over to the real mastermind, Moundir Kamil. Kamil, a Moroccan national in the U.S. illegally who was previously convicted of bank robbery and served time in a California prison, was able to hack the facial recognition software of the phone and gain access to all the phone’s apps. While surfers were locked out of their cars, the thieves would empty bank accounts, investment holdings, crypto wallets, you name it. When the credit card companies would call to ask if there was fraudulent behavior from a purchase at stores like Chanel or the Apple Store, the thieves, in possession of the phone, would simply answer and approve the charges.
The crooks are now awaiting trial. Daniel Castillo, the man whom Dulien originally caught on his security camera, faces 30 charges, including grand theft and fraud. Dulien told STAB that Castillo already had three felonies and a homicide charge. Kamil, the tech mastermind, is also in custody awaiting trial.
Thanks to Dulien’s persistence and the combined effort of surfers who contributed their stories, Southern California surfers don’t have to worry about these criminals tormenting their surf sessions. That said, it should be a lesson to all surfers to work out a smart key system for when you paddle out. Surfers have been the targets of clever thieves before, after all.
“The surf community is one tribe. … Everyone doesn’t get along but at the end of the day if someone’s drowning, we’re gonna do whatever we can to save them,” said Dulien. “I feel very happy to know that these guys aren’t gonna do this to anyone else, especially other surfers.”
