Maui Fire Survivors Scammed, Zero Contractor Prosecutions — SkimNews
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- Raquel Utrillo paid a contractor $640,000 to rebuild her family's home after the 2023 Lahaina fire; the contractor stopped showing up and by early 2026 had stopped responding to her messages, leaving the lot nearly empty.
- A joint Inside Climate News/Civil Beat investigation reviewed hundreds of pages of police reports, court filings, contracts, and text messages, and found no criminal charges, license revocations, fines, or injunctions against contractors for post-wildfire misconduct.
- Hawaii's Department of Commerce & Consumer Affairs said it is aware of 12 post-wildfire complaints, with 8 investigations still pending and the rest closed without disciplinary action, despite a pattern of repeat victimization.
- The 2023 Maui wildfires killed 102 people, destroyed more than 2,200 structures, displaced nearly 13,000, and caused more than $5.5 billion in damage; as of Aug. 13, only about 580 homes have been rebuilt.
- California prosecutors have already charged 16 unlicensed contractors with felonies tied to the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, a pace that has not been matched by any public enforcement action in Hawaii.
- Maui County prosecutors have assigned a deputy and an investigator nearly full time to fraud cases and, at an Aug. 12 Lahaina meeting, urged residents to come forward so the office can build criminal cases.
Why it matters: Hawaii's enforcement agencies possess every tool needed to act — criminal charges, license revocations, cease-and-desist orders — yet three years after the fire have used none of them against contractors accused of taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from survivors, even as California moved within months on its own post-wildfire fraud. For families like Utrillo's who paid $640,000 to a vanished contractor, the gap between official warnings and actual enforcement translates directly into empty lots and prolonged displacement.
Ask SkimNews
