Government bags its limit of Brugnara

In the end, loudmouthed Luke Brugnara sleeps without the fishes.

Brugnara, 46, is the extremely cocky Bay Area real estate man who was certain he was the next Strip casino titan following his purchase of the old Silver City property. Trouble is, Gaming Control Board investigators noticed he hadn’t paid his taxes for most of the 1990s.

They frown on such things.

More recently, Brugnara bragged that he had placed what should have been the winning offer on the troubled Crazy Horse Too topless cabaret on Industrial Road. That sale failed.

Now Brugnara has found a way to live at government expense, recently catching felony sentences for tax evasion and for poaching protected steelhead trout.

He received a 15-month sentence for blocking the steelhead migration in a creek that runs across his property outside San Jose, Calif. He earlier was hit with a 2 1/2 –year sentence for filing false tax returns and failing to pay taxes on $45 million in capital gains and obstructing the Internal Revenue Service.