A former firefighter who investigators say spent more than a year planting improvised explosive devices alongside roads and highways in El Dorado and Sacramento counties has been convicted of every charge against him. Benjamin Edward Cunha, 44, of Orangevale, pleaded no contest on Friday to all 41 felony charges he faced, the El Dorado County District Attorney's Office announced on Monday.
Source: The Sacramento Bee
It was an open plea, not a bargain. Prosecutors stressed that Cunha's no-contest plea was not the result of a plea deal: El Dorado Superior Court Judge Thomas Smith accepted the plea and admissions, and it will be up to the judge alone to decide the sentence. Cunha faces a maximum of more than 80 years in state prison.
Source: Gold Country Media (Mountain Democrat)
The 41 counts, charge by charge
The charges stem from incidents between December 2022 and January 2024 — 18 of them in El Dorado County and 23 in Sacramento County. Fifteen counts charge Cunha with using a destructive device and explosive to injure or destroy: prosecutors say he exploded and ignited devices with the intent to injure, intimidate and terrify people and to wrongfully injure and destroy property, including vehicles, trees, light poles and a fire hydrant. He was also convicted of eight counts of possessing a destructive device in a place where people are present — seven in or near a public place and one at a home — ten counts of possessing a destructive device without a California Department of Justice permit, four counts of possessing ingredients to make a destructive device, three counts of possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, and one count of child endangerment under circumstances likely to produce great bodily harm or death.
Source: The Sacramento Bee / Gold Country Media
Cunha also admitted every special allegation and enhancement in the case, including a prior strike, a prior serious felony conviction and factors in aggravation, according to the District Attorney's Office account reported by Gold Country Media. A no-contest plea means a defendant does not dispute the charges and is convicted without a trial, while not formally admitting the conduct in the way a guilty plea does.
Source: Gold Country Media (Mountain Democrat)
How investigators caught him
Cunha was arrested in January 2024 after an investigation into what the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office called a series of improvised explosive devices placed alongside roads and highways in multiple locations in both counties. The case was investigated by the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, the California Highway Patrol and the FBI, and at the time of the arrest the CHP described an intense operation in which an explosive ordnance disposal team carried out critical search warrants.
Source: The Sacramento Bee
"The conduct Mr. Cunha admitted to put people throughout our region at risk," District Attorney Vern Pierson said in the announcement. "I hope he spends a very long time in prison and serves the full sentence the court imposes, without being released early." Sheriff Jeff Leikauf said investigators dedicated countless hours to make sure Cunha is held accountable for actions "that could easily have cost innocent people their lives."
Source: The Sacramento Bee
These were not devices found in a remote field. Prosecutors say they were placed alongside the roads and highways that commuters, school buses, delivery drivers and long-haul truckers use every day between Sacramento and the Sierra foothills — the same corridors many Punjabi truckers based in the Sacramento region drive for work. That is why the sheriff said the case could easily have cost innocent people their lives, and why four agencies, including the FBI, worked it.
A firefighter who had already been convicted of arson
This is not Cunha's first conviction for setting dangerous fires and devices. He served as a volunteer firefighter with the Diamond Springs Fire Protection District in El Dorado County and worked as a seasonal firefighter for Cal Fire from 2001 to 2003. In the federal case, he pleaded guilty in 2015 to arson over the Mine Fire, a vegetation fire that burned about 80 acres, including federal land, on July 6, 2007. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, he admitted setting at least 30 wildland fires during the summers of 2006 and 2007, causing $7 million in damage, and was sentenced to five years in federal prison and ordered to pay $246,862 in restitution to Cal Fire.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
That history is part of why this plea matters locally: a man already imprisoned once for serial arson was, within a few years of that sentence, accused of a second, longer campaign — this time with explosive devices near public roads — and has now been convicted of all of it without a trial.
Source: The Sacramento Bee
What happens next
Cunha remains in custody at the El Dorado County Jail. Judgment and sentencing are scheduled for January 29, 2027, in Department 2 of El Dorado Superior Court, where prosecutors say they will ask the judge to impose the maximum sentence under the law. Until then, the conviction stands on all 41 counts, and no plea agreement limits what Judge Smith can impose.