WAILUKU, Hawaii — The Maui Police Commission voted 6-0 on Wednesday to place Police Chief John Pelletier on paid administrative leave and open an independent investigation into his oversight of the department’s Criminal Intelligence Unit, the unit whose commander was arrested by the FBI in August on charges he sold police protection to cockfighters, drug traffickers and fireworks smugglers, Honolulu Civil Beat reported.
Independent reporter Connect the Dots with Jenni stated that she had confirmation that multiple officers have received target letters from the FBI. One of them being Michael Vaituulala’s wife’s cousin.
Pelletier was flying home from New Jersey, where the FBI had him on stage as a presenter at its conference, Deputy Chief Wade Maeda told the commission. The same FBI that two months earlier walked his intelligence commander out in handcuffs apparently saw no problem handing the chief a microphone. In a second unanimous vote, the commissioners made Maeda acting chief. The meeting was not livestreamed, KHON2 reported, and the commission did not respond to requests for comment afterward.
The Larry Mehau of Maui: The Protection Racket That Ran Under John Pelletier’s Nose
The Criminal Intelligence Unit reported directly to Pelletier. Its commander was Lt. Michael Vaituulala, 53, a nearly 20-year veteran whom the FBI arrested Aug. 6 and charged by complaint with conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, a count that carries up to 20 years. According to the complaint, as reported by Civil Beat, cockfight organizers paid him a cut of their proceeds, with cash left in the glove compartment of his truck. A drug seller covered his bar tabs. A cooperating witness handed him a bag of cash in Las Vegas in August 2025.
In return, prosecutors say, he told officers which fights to leave alone, shared evidence photos and the identities of confidential sources with traffickers, and disclosed a sealed federal wiretap and a sealed arrest warrant. He allegedly told contacts to use burner phones and made people take off their shirts to check for wires. One source said he wanted to be “the Larry Mehau of Maui.”
A magistrate judge ordered him held without bail on Aug. 20, finding a “strong probability” he would cover his tracks. He had deleted his Instagram account shortly before the arrest. His own department had suspended him in March over an illegal fireworks incident, five months before the FBI moved.
Pelletier’s response in August was a press conference. He said he was “disappointed, shocked, upset,” promised “zero tolerance,” announced an internal investigation and an outside review by Hawaii County Police Chief Reed Mahuna, and disbanded the unit. None of that answers the question the commission has now been forced to ask.
A lieutenant does not run a protection racket for “many years,” in the words of the complaint, inside a unit with a direct line to the chief’s office without the chief either knowing or not wanting to know.
Pelletier: Dirty, Stupid, or Both?
None of this should surprise anyone who has been staying on top of the news. In November 2024, we reported that three senior commanders had been forced out of the department, that eight complaints had been filed against the chief within eight months, and that a 2021 Board of Ethics complaint had alleged collusion between Pelletier and commission members in his own selection. Sources described a “reign of terror” inside the department.
In May 2025, we reported allegations that Pelletier was “driving intoxicated” in a single-car crash near his home in Wailuku. The incident had been handled by fellow officers in a way that spared him a breathalyzer. Pelletier has never addressed those claims.
According to Jeni’s sources, Pelletier was allegedly drinking with fellow officers, and drove into a ditch while intoxicated. A patrol officer then showed up to administer a breathalyzer test, and was yelled at by other officers to not administer it. A tow truck then came to pull out the vehicle out of the ditch.
Pelletier was allegedly drinking with fellow officers, and drove into a ditch while intoxicated
Between those two stories came the lawsuit. On March 7, 2025, Ashley Parham amended her federal complaint against Sean “Diddy” Combs in the Northern District of California to name Pelletier, alleging that he participated in multiple crimes with Combs, when he was a Las Vegas Metro Police captain.
Two other plaintiffs alleged Pelletier kidnapped them from Las Vegas at gunpoint. Pelletier called the allegations “false” and “baseless.” Several sources report that federal investigations are ongoing against Pelletier in that matter, including his alleged participation in recent tampering with witnesses.
Around the same time, Pelletier was seen at a Maui Police Commission meeting in the company of Shep Gordon and Adam Venit. Venit, the former head of WME’s motion picture department, was publicly accused by actor Terry Crews of groping him at a 2016 party, and was sued in 2022 by his estranged wife, who alleged he strangled, punched and kicked her. He has denied both. Gordon, the longtime manager of Alice Cooper and of Johnny Depp’s band the Hollywood Vampires, is a Maui resident with deep Hollywood connections.
A police chief under fire does not usually bring a disgraced Hollywood agent and a celebrity manager to his own oversight hearing. That he did invites the obvious question, which is whether the Las Vegas captain who swears he never worked for Sean Combs has been working with Hollywood executives all along. It lends weight to the claim at the center of the Parham suit: that Pelletier was never just a cop, but a fixer who worked for Sean Combs and others.
Pelletier’s defenders treat each episode as a coincidence, and there have been a lot of coincidences. He falsely represented himself as the Las Vegas incident commander at the Route 91 shooting in 2017. He was the chief in Lahaina on Aug. 8, 2023, when 102 people died and survivors described police barricades turning cars back toward the fire, a charge he disputes.
He is the officer named in a Diddy rape suit. Writer Jessica Reed Kraus put it this way last year: “Some men seem to be magnets for catastrophe. John Pelletier is one of them.” The corruption of a unit that reported to him does not need a theory. It needs an answer.
The Maui Police Commission’s Role in the Corruption
The commission has sole authority to hire and fire the chief. For 19 months it used that authority to protect him. It has not said who will conduct the investigation, what it will cover beyond “oversight” of the unit, or when it will report. Vaituulala’s case has not yet produced an indictment on the public docket, and his lawyer is fighting to see the sealed material prosecutors used to keep him locked up. Whatever is in that material is what the commission needs to see too.
Pelletier was hired from Las Vegas in 2021 in a contested selection that passed over local candidates with more experience. A Board of Ethics complaint accused the commission that hired him of colluding with him in the process, and commissioners were questioned over multiple trips to Las Vegas while the search was underway.
Five years later the department’s intelligence unit is gone, its commander is in a federal cell, and the chief is on paid leave with the FBI conference lanyard still around his neck. Maeda says the FBI has never suggested the chief did anything wrong. The commission has decided it would rather find out than take his word for it. That is the first good decision it has made about John Pelletier.
Sources: Honolulu Civil Beat (Oct. 7, 2026; Aug. 6, 2026; March 19, 2025); KHON2 (Oct. 7, 2026); Maui Now (Oct. 7, 2026); Hawaii News Now (Oct. 7, 2026); Honolulu Star-Advertiser (Aug. 11, 2026); United States v. Vaituulala, D. Haw., criminal complaint and detention order (Aug. 20, 2026); Parham v. Combs, No. 3:24-cv-07191 (N.D. Cal.), amended complaint (March 7, 2025) and order dismissing for failure to prosecute (Dec. 16, 2025); Jessica Reed Kraus, Substack (March 15, 2025); Paul Smith’s reporting at Shockya. This is an opinion article.
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