Fireworks Firm Tied To Illegal Hawaiʻi Shipment OK’d To Sell Firecrackers
The Honolulu Fire Department says it has no legal basis to deny the company a permit to sell firecrackers despite its involvement in a shipment of $2.7 million of illegal fireworks seized by the Coast Guard in 2022.
A Civil Beat investigation this year documented a web of connections between a mainland fireworks business and a 2022 shipment of $2.7 million worth of illegal pyrotechnics discovered inside a Matson container at Honolulu Harbor.
But that won’t stop Pacific Fireworks from selling firecrackers at outlets on Oʻahu, Maui and perhaps on the other islands leading up to the New Year, as it has for more than two decades.
The Honolulu Fire Department says it granted a retail sales license to the company after talking to the state Department of Law Enforcement, which operates an illegal fireworks task force in the aftermath of an explosion that killed six and seriously injured several others last New Year’s.
“HFD checked in with DLE specifically in regards to Pacific Fireworks … ,” HFD spokeswoman Jaimie Song wrote in an email. “DLE had no legal reason to support any denial of a retail permit.”
Spokesman David Patterson says the Department of Law Enforcement expects new indictments of fireworks violators sometime soon, but declined to say whether Pacific Fireworks might be among them or whether the department ever looked into Civil Beat’s findings.
“DLE can’t provide details on any current investigations because it could hurt their case but they are aware of shipments of illegal fireworks and will make arrests,” he wrote in an email. “And DLE is very aware of many illegal operations and provides details to prosecutors for them to pursue and eventually indict.”
Honolulu Says No To Company Importing Firecrackers
Pacific Fireworks also has applied for a license on Kauaʻi. As of Monday, that application was still under review.
The company won’t be able to do business completely as usual, however. Although it can sell fireworks on Oʻahu, it can’t legally bring any into port. HFD denied Pacific Fireworks a license to import firecrackers to Hawaiʻi’s most populous island — or store them there — after discovering that in the past it did not get a required certificate showing it was fit to handle them.
Dino Alexakos, a Pacific Fireworks employee, applied for the import license in October. In 2015, the Civil Beat investigation found that Alexakos pleaded no contest to selling firecrackers to someone without a permit after an undercover agent bought 50,000.
“Bro, you don’t need a permit here,” Alexakos told the officer in that case.
This year, HFD told Alexakos that the import and storage licenses would require a certificate of fitness demonstrating understanding of explosives and the ability to store and use them safely. In emails Civil Beat obtained through the state’s Uniform Information Practices Act, Alexakos complained that the company had never before been required to get the certificate.
He said that the certificate, which requires passing a test administered each month, seemed geared to those who operate display fireworks in large-scale shows.
“We are a retailer of firecrackers and sell for 1 week a year … ,” Alexakos wrote to HFD in October. “Something is wrong.”
Alexakos pointed out that firecrackers were not responsible for to the Salt Lake deaths last New Years, writing: “I understand that what happened last New Year’s Eve was a travesty, but again that had nothing to do with firecrackers.”
HFD said that it has always required importers to obtain the certificate, and that licensing Pacific Fireworks without one was an oversight.
“This is not a new requirement,” HFD’s Song told Civil Beat in an email.
Officials say they are being more diligent in enforcing the rules, however, after the Salt Lake accident that killed six and injured at least 20 others.
“After the New Year’s deaths, all agency’s (sic) are cracking down and checking everything for validation,” HFD fireworks inspector Ted Muraoka wrote Alexakos in October.
DLE spokesman Patterson told Civil Beat in an email that “the laws and penalties for obtaining and using fireworks are a lot stronger this year. DLE enforcement has increased searches at all ports and has been patrolling neighborhoods with drones.”
In early November, Alexakos asked HFD to withdraw the application for an import license and said he would try to obtain a certificate of fitness for the future.
A 2022 Shipment Tied To An Illinois Address
Civil Beat’s investigation laid out an intricate network of connections between Pacific Fireworks and the 2022 contraband.
The boxes of aerial fireworks were discovered after a Matson contractor noticed a container weighed three times more than its stated contents of 5,000 pounds of fasteners. When the Coast Guard opened it up, they found $2.7 million worth of aerial fireworks, which are illegal in Hawaiʻi and the type that caused the Salt Lake explosion.
The fireworks confiscated in 2022 were repackaged and sent back to the mainland for destruction, and no one was ever charged. It’s unclear from public records how thoroughly it was investigated and the various agencies involved either said a different entity was responsible or that they had no record of the incident.
But Civil Beat found that the address on the Matson invoice for the shipment — 5317 Saint Charles Road in Berkeley, Illinois — was a commercial building near Chicago O’Hare International Airport tied to a man named John Massari.
Massari is the president of Sky’s The Limit, a North Dakota fireworks company that runs the Pacific Fireworks retail outlets in Hawaiʻi. He did not respond to a request for comment.
The registered agent for one of Massari’s businesses, Nick Folino, listed 5317 Saint Charles Road as his address, as did Massari. Folino has in past years managed the Pacific Fireworks retail outlet on Maui, appearing on a radio show and in local media touting the company’s wares.
Another person associated with Pacific Fireworks — Erika Kleinfeld — has also been tied to illegal fireworks shipments to Hawaiʻi. For more than two decades, Kleinfeld has run Pacific Fireworks’ outlet in Līhuʻe, and has been featured every year in stories about the advent of firecracker season in The Garden Island newspaper.
In 2003, she claimed to be the shipper of 552 cartons of fireworks shipped from China to Honolulu. But a judge found that she was serving as a figurehead for Larry Lomaz, the previous owner of Pacific Fireworks.
Lomaz, who died in 2012, was a notorious fireworks outlaw whose legal troubles with the federal government led to a requirement that he test his products for safety. Each of his shipments had to be reported to the Consumer Products Safety Commission.
Yet only one of the 552 cartons in the 2003 shipment had the required safety sticker.
“Figuratively Mr. Lomaz was hiding behind Ms. Kleinfeld’s skirt,” the judge wrote.
In October, the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs received an annual filing from Sky’s The Limit, Massari’s company in Horace, North Dakota, describing the company’s activities as “seasonal sales of firecrackers.”
This month, DCCA issued the company a certificate of good standing. That certificate is given to entities incorporated in other states authorizing them to do business in Hawaiʻi and acknowledging that they have complied with the law regulating out-of-state firms.
Kauaʻi recently received an application from the company to run a seasonal store there, which also is still being reviewed. Pacific Fireworks did not apply to the county for an import license.
As of Nov. 18, the Big Island’s fire department said it had not received any applications from Pacific Fireworks. Asked for an update in early December, the department asked Civil Beat to file a request under the state’s public records law. It has not yet responded to that request.
