Ontario warehouse fire suspect, angry at corporations, caused $500 million in damage, federal officials say – Daily Bulletin
The warehouse employee accused of setting a fire that destroyed a massive household paper-products distribution center in Ontario was motivated by his hostility toward corporations that he says don’t fairly reward their workers, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in announcing a federal arson charge against Chamel Abdulkarim on Friday, April 10.
Abdulkarim, a 29-year-old Highland resident, had already been charged with one count of aggravated arson and six counts of arson of a structure by the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office.
Abdulkarim was scheduled to enter pleas to the local charges on Friday in Superior Court in Rancho Cucamonga, but the hearing was postponed to Monday because he was not medically cleared to be transported to the courthouse, San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokeswoman Gloria Orejel said.
Essayli estimated the damage at at least $500 million.
A video posted to Instagram that Ontario police say was filmed by Abdulkarim shows pallets of merchandise ablaze on Tuesday as a man repeatedly says variations of “All you had to do was pay us enough to live” laced with expletives.
“This act of violence, apparently, was driven by his hostility to capitalism and corporations,” Essayli said at a morning news conference outside the courthouse. “The defendant repeatedly boasted of his crimes. He posted Instagram videos showing himself lighting the merchandise on fire in the warehouse. He said, quote, You know, if you’re not going to pay us enough to (expletive) live, at least pay us enough to not do this.
“In a text message to a coworker in the hour after the arson, the defendant wrote, quote, All you had to do was pay us enough to live, pay us more of the value WE bring, not corporations. Didn’t see the shareholders picking up a shift, unquote,” Essayli said.
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San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson speaks during a news conference outside the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in Rancho Cucamonga on Friday, April 10, 2026, regarding charges filed against Chamel A. Abdulkarim, who is accused of arson in a warehouse fire that destroyed paper products at an Ontario distribution center for Kimberly-Clark. (Photo by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Sun/SCNG)
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Additionally, Essayli said, Abdulkarim, in a phone call to a witness as the fire burned, compared himself to the man accused of killing the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, in a New York City ambush in 2024.
“Luigi (Mangione) popped that (expletive),” the defendant said, according to a written statement by federal officials.
“There is an extremely disturbing trend where people are resorting to violence to communicate political messages or economic messages,” Essayli said. “I don’t know if this guy saw himself as a Luigi, but he’s an arsonist. He is a criminal. America’s founded on capitalism. Anyone who attacks our values, our way of life, our system, which provides the best goods and services to the most people, we’re going to come after aggressively.”
Abdulkarim also texted a friend photos of the warehouse burning as he walked away, the federal complaint said.
Federal and state prosecutors are pursuing separate cases.
In the federal case, Abdulkarim was charged late Thursday with arson of a building used in interstate and foreign commerce.
The aggravated arson charge carries a sentence of 10 years to life in state prison. The federal charge has a minimum sentence of five years and a maximum of 20.
The First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli speaks during a news conference outside the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in Rancho Cucamonga on Friday, April 10, 2026, regarding charges filed against Chamel A. Abdulkarim, who is accused of arson in a warehouse fire that destroyed paper products at an Ontario distribution center for Kimberly-Clark. (Photo by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Sun/SCNG)
San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson said the state case will be prosecuted first because the potential sentence for aggravated arson is longer than that for the federal charge.
Aggravated arson is one of the most serious property crimes in California because the charge accuses a person of malice, premeditation and at least $10.1 million in damage. Anderson said the damage was actually $650 million: $500 million damage to the merchandise and $150 million in destruction to the building.
“There goes your inventory,” a person says on the video.
“In San Bernardino County, we’ve had a number of arson cases even in the last year,” Anderson said. “Unfortunately, those cases have dealt with land and homes. We’ve held people responsible on those particular cases. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it today: Arson, to me, is a real head scratcher. I do not understand that somebody who is suspected of arson does something where they get no value out of it other than to displace people from their jobs, to ruin commerce, to get in the way of labor, to put people in physical harm.”
In the most high-profile recent arson case in the county, Justin Wayne Halstenberg of Norco was sentenced to 16 years to life in state prison in October 2025 for setting the Line fire in Highland in September 2024 — a blaze that damaged six structures, injured six firefighters and burned 44,000 acres.
Abdulkarim worked for NFI Industries, which operated the 1.2 million-square-foot warehouse where products such as paper towels, diapers, wipes and facial tissues made by Fortune 500 company Kimberly-Clark were stored.
It was unclear what job Abdulkarim held in the warehouse and what he was paid. The website Glassdoor.com says forklift operators can make $38,000-$58,000 annually. An NFI spokesperson this week declined to comment on Abdulkarim.
A court filing said Abdulkarim defaulted on a $2,976 credit card debt in 2025.
Critics of the proliferation of warehouses in the Inland Empire, whose airports and freeways make it a prime logistical hub for product movement, say some companies pay substandard wages. A report by UC Riverside titled “State of the Unions — California Labor in 2024,” says 1 in 15 of the 1.7 million people employed in Riverside and San Bernardino counties is a warehouse worker who makes only 75% of what the average worker in the region earns, while facing dangerous working conditions and setbacks in gaining union recognition.
Tuesday’s fire was reported about 12:30 a.m. near Merrill and Hellman avenues. Firefighters first tried to extinguish the blaze from inside the building. But the blaze quickly took off and drew 175 firefighters from around Southern California.
The federal complaint gave this account of how Abdulkarim was found and arrested:
Employees said he had been seen at the warehouse but did not evacuate with the other employees.
As the fire began, a witness with a close relationship with Abdulkarim asked Ontario police to check on him.
The caller “received text messages from Abdulkarim that stated he wanted to ‘say goodbye’ and that ‘he just wants to hear (their) voice one more time,’ ” the federal complaint said.
Officers found Abdulkarim walking about two miles from the warehouse. He approached them with his hands up and with what appeared to be a cellphone with its flashlight on pointed at the officers.
He was talking on the phone.
“I’m confessing,” he told officers, according to the complaint.
Officers found a lighter on Abdulkarim with the logo of FC Bayern Munich, a soccer team.
“I don’t answer questions,” Abdulkarim then said.
Essayli described Abdulkarim as a “political extremist.”
“They seem almost proud of their crimes,” Essayli said. “And so, I don’t know if it’s part of the politics going on or what the story is, but they don’t seem particularly concerned with being caught.
“So I think there’s a message out there that maybe in California, you know, we’re not serious about crime, or there isn’t real consequences, but he’s about to find out real quick that there are real consequences,” the first assistant U.S. attorney said.
“It’s an attack on society and all of us here, all the hardworking taxpayers, who are not only being defrauded — but you have guys like this who are lighting up warehouses, which provide good-paying jobs to people, or jobs that people need,” he said. “So, it’s disgusting.”
