A former northern California sheriff’s department lieutenant is one of five people who have been charged with murder after a powerful explosion at an illegal fireworks factory on his land killed seven warehouse workers in 2025.
“Samuel Machado, a former lieutenant with the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office, had one million pounds of fireworks on his property at the time of the blast and used his status as a law enforcement officer to shield the illegal operation from investigators, according to prosecutors,” the Daily Mail reported Saturday.
Machado was placed on administrative leave and has since resigned after last summer’s explosion in Esparto, about 40 miles northwest of Sacramento.
The blast reportedly could be felt up to 20 miles away. It also destroyed a family’s farm and caused a 78-acre grassfire.
According to the report, the companies behind the scheme “allegedly manufactured fireworks so powerful that they didn’t even qualify as fireworks.”
The companies, Blackstar Fireworks, Inc. and Devastating Pyrotechnics LLC, stored the explosives at Machado’s property, according to a 30-count grand jury indictment announced by the Yolo County district attorney’s office.
According to the Daily Mail’s reporting:
Among the dead workers were Christopher Goltiao Bocog, 45, and Neil Justin Li, 41, both from San Francisco; Joel Jeremias Melendez, 28, of Sacramento; and Carlos Javier Rodriguez-Mora, 43, from San Andreas. Two brothers — Jesus Manaces Ramos, just 18, and Jhony Ernesto Ramos, 22, of San Pablo — were also killed in the explosion, along with Angel Mathew Voller, 18, from Stockton.
An official within the county Building Services Department received a tip in 2022 that Machado’s property was being used for an illegal fireworks operation, but no action was taken, according to the Mail.
“Emails show that officials said they would ‘tread lightly’ in their search of the area because it was owned by ‘deputies that we work with’,” the Mail added.
The indictment alleged that this was a decade-long conspiracy that ‘turned the property of a former Sheriff’s Lieutenant Sam Machado into the Northern California hub for an illegal enterprise that imports illegal explosives on the black market,’” according to Deputy District Attorney Clara Nabity.
Devastating Pyrotechnics CEO and owner Kenneth Chee, operations manager Jack Lee, and business partner Gary Chan Jr. were charged with murder, as was Douglas Tollefsen of Blackstar Fireworks.
A total of seven people were charged for their alleged role in the July 2025 explosion and were arrested late last week, District Attorney Jeff Reisig said.
The enterprise allegedly imported more than 11 million pounds of explosives, with one million stored in a 5,000-square-foot warehouse and more than 50 containers near the Machado home when the explosion occurred, prosecutors said.
Machado’s wife, Tammy, was employed in an administrative role at the Sheriff’s Office when the explosion occurred and has since resigned from the department.
She was separately charged with child and animal endangerment for allegedly storing illegal fireworks on their property, including “a substantial volume of explosives … stored adjacent to a family pool,” Nabity said.
The sweeping indictments also pile on a string of additional charges, including maintaining an unsafe workplace, unlawfully starting a fire, insurance fraud, child endangerment, animal cruelty, tax fraud, and possession of illegal assault weapons.
Families of the victims have filed a $35 million lawsuit against the county and state fireworks regulators, accusing them of negligence for allowing the illegal operation to continue unchecked.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
