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A few months ago, the Los Angeles Times, CNN and other national media outlets reported on how a collection of SoCal surfers united to track down a “group of well-organized, high-tech thieves” who allegedly “stole over a million dollars from more than a hundred surfers” in the area.
The thieves’ scheme, as reported in a March 27 article by The Inertia: “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” who 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.”
That mastermind, according to court documents, was Moundir Kamil, “a Moroccan national who had previously been convicted of bank robbery and served time in prison in California,” the LA Times reported, without detailing Kamil’s prior exploits.
Longtime Business Journal readers might remember the alleged mastermind’s name from a series of stories I broke in 2010 and 2011, garnering national attention.
Kamil was the man convicted of stealing Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren’s $1.4 million federal tax refund check in 2010, faking his identity to set up bank accounts, and withdrawing most of the money before later getting caught.
Dubbed the “Give Me More Bandit” for his role in a series of bank robberies in 2003, Kamil in 2015 was sentenced to three years of probation and 99 days in jail for the Bren theft, despite his prior record.
Denmark residents often rank near the top of the list for the world’s happiest people, but you could be forgiven wondering if there’s a few less smiles these days—at least towards Americans—given President Donald Trump’s ham-fisted attempts of wresting control of Greenland from the country and the haphazard implantation of tariffs toward European countries this year.
“We have had a lot going on regarding Greenland and other international affairs issues with the new administration,” says longtime OC businessman Torben Aaskov, who had served as the Honorary Consul of Denmark in California and Nevada since 2012, and who also runs Orange-based Tradeworks, which sells food, beverages and other items from Denmark and other European countries to some of the country’s largest supermarket chains.
“No dull moments the last few months.”
Aaskov, who was knighted by Danish monarch Queen Margrethe II in 2020, recently turned over the Consul position to LA-based movie director and producer Christian Bruun. It wasn’t due to political issues but geographical ones. Aaskov and his wife are moving from Coto de Caza to Provence, France, with an eye on building Tradeworks’ presence in Europe.
“I will keep the business here with a small team operating in CA, and I will be closer to our suppliers,” he said.