An Uber driver is facing a federal charge after allegedly setting a fire that turned into one of California's most destructive wildfires.

Authorities allege Jonathan Rinderknecht, who previously lived in the Pacific Palisades, was working as an Uber driver in the area on New Year’s Eve and picked up at least two rides that night before starting a fire that would become known as the Lachman Fire, according to the criminal complaint filed in California.

Nine months after a raging inferno decimated the Los Angeles area, claiming the lives of a dozen people and burning down thousands of homes and businesses, officials have arrested a suspect in Florida on suspicion of arson.

The fire in Los Angeles is believed to have been tied to an earlier fireworks-sparked blaze on New Year’s Day. Federal officials are expected to announce details of the arrest at a news conference.

The revelations — unveiled in a criminal complaint and attached affidavit Wednesday charging the alleged arsonist, Jonathan Rinderknecht — raise questions about what the Los Angeles Fire Department could have done to prevent the conflagration.

Rinderknecht is accused of setting a brush fire Jan. 1 that was put out, but then smoldered unnoticed underground for days before igniting the raging Palisades inferno.

A Florida man has been arrested on suspicion of arson in connection with the destructive Palisades Fire that killed a dozen people in Los Angeles earlier this year, officials said on Wednesday.The man,

Jonathan Rinderknecht, a former Palisades resident, now living in Florida, was arrested for maliciously starting the Palisades Fire of January 2025.