Florida landscaper says he got a text to cut down palm trees worth thousands – but the homeowner denies it, and now the landscaper has disappeared

Susan El Khoury’s report for Tampa Bay 28 begins with the kind of story that sounds too strange to be real until you picture it happening in your own front yard. A Hillsborough County homeowner, Denise Harris, was inside her house when she heard loud noises close by, opened the front door, and found a landscaping crew already cutting down two queen palm trees on her property.

What made it worse, El Khoury reported, was that Harris says she never hired them, never spoke with them beforehand, and never gave anyone permission to touch the trees.

That is the detail that makes this story so unsettling. A landscaping mistake is one thing. A crew showing up and cutting down trees worth thousands of dollars, apparently based on a text from somebody else, feels like something much bigger than a routine misunderstanding.

Harris put it simply in El Khoury’s report: “I didn’t ask for this, and I sure didn’t deserve it.”

That is hard to argue with.

Two Queen Palms Gone, and More Damage Left Behind

According to Susan El Khoury, the two queen palms were the centerpiece of Harris’s front yard, and Harris valued them at about $2,000 each. She told Tampa Bay 28 that the loss was not just financial. It changed the look of her home and left her standing there trying to make sense of something that should not have happened in the first place.

In the report, Harris looked at the empty space and said she was “kind of speechless.”

The damage, El Khoury noted, did not stop with the trees. Harris also said the crew damaged a power line and destroyed one of her hibiscus plants during the work. So this was not a case of someone quietly trimming the wrong shrub or taking down a dead limb. It was visible, expensive property damage that appears to have happened in broad daylight.

That is part of why the story sticks.

A homeowner expects many things from a landscaping crew, but not strangers arriving with chainsaws and making permanent changes to the property without even knocking on the door first.

The Text Message Explanation Raises More Questions Than Answers

El Khoury reported that Harris confronted the workers and was told they had received instructions from their boss to come to that exact house and cut down the palm trees. Harris later identified that boss as Stephen Sciuga, owner of Steve’s Landscape Consulting Service.

According to Harris, Sciuga told her he had received a text message telling him to come to her address and remove the trees.

That explanation might have sounded flimsy even if it had ended there, but it became even stranger when Harris told El Khoury that a few days earlier, another landscaping company had also shown up because of a similar text. That earlier message came from someone identifying himself only as “John” and referenced her exact address, describing it as a “new property” that needed tree work.

Harris said she does not know who John is.

That is the part of the story that shifts it from a bizarre mistake into something that feels almost targeted. One landscaping company can be chalked up to confusion. Two separate approaches tied to the same property make it much harder to dismiss as random.

Steve Lehto, discussing the case on Lehto’s Law, zeroed in on that same problem. He said the landscaper’s excuse essentially boiled down to this: somebody texted him, so he went and chopped down the trees. Lehto plainly did not buy that as a defense.

And frankly, he has a point.

Steve Lehto’s Argument: “I Was Following Orders” Is Not Good Enough

Lehto’s commentary is useful because he strips the story down to the basic legal and common-sense issue. In his telling, it does not matter very much whether someone else sent the text. If you are the one who shows up, fires up the chainsaw, and cuts down trees on property you do not own, the responsibility still lands on you.

He put it in practical terms.

Anyone who uses a chainsaw, Lehto said, knows rule number one: you should know what you are cutting down and whether you have the right to cut it down. That may sound obvious, but in a case like this, obvious matters. A contractor or landscaper does not get to hide behind a mystery texter and pretend that basic verification is optional.

Lehto also asked the question that may bother homeowners the most: who starts work on a stranger’s property without knocking on the door and making sure they are in the right place?

That question is devastating because there is no good answer to it.

If a contractor’s number one concern is usually getting paid, as Lehto pointed out, then it makes even less sense to arrive at a home, begin major work, and never confirm the job with the owner. That kind of behavior suggests either astonishing carelessness or the possibility that the landscaper knew this arrangement was not normal from the start.

Then the Landscaper Vanished

El Khoury reported that after the trees were cut down, Sciuga met with Harris and allegedly set a date to come back and fix the damage. Harris says that never happened. He never returned, never made the yard right, and stopped responding.

When El Khoury tried to reach him, she said the calls went to voicemail.

She then went a step further, checking state records and visiting the address listed for his company. That address, according to her report, turned out to be a canoe rental spot and RV park on the Manatee River. Staff there told Tampa Bay 28 that Sciuga had briefly lived there but had since been banned from the property.

That detail makes the whole situation look even worse.

A contractor who does disputed work and then becomes hard to find is already a problem. A contractor whose listed address leads to a place where staff say he no longer lives and is banned from being there starts to look less like a businessman who made a mistake and more like someone who leaves chaos behind.

What the Homeowner Can Still Do

El Khoury spoke with real estate attorney Stephen Hatchey, who gave Harris the advice most homeowners probably do not want to hear but may need: if the company will not voluntarily fix the damage or replace what was wrongfully removed, the next step is likely a lawsuit.

Hatchey’s advice was practical. He said homeowners in this situation should document everything, take photos of the damage, gather before-and-after pictures if they have them, keep physical evidence such as pieces of the tree stumps, get repair estimates, send a written demand letter, and then file a claim if necessary.

Lehto echoed much of that advice in his own way. He said people should keep records, take photographs, gather witness information, and preserve anything that might later matter in court.

That may not sound dramatic, but it is important. In property damage cases, especially when the other side starts disappearing, documentation often becomes the case.

There is another wrinkle here that El Khoury highlighted. Hillsborough County records showed no permit was pulled for cutting down trees of that size on Harris’s property, even though that kind of removal likely would have required one.

Yet the sheriff’s office reportedly told Harris the matter was civil, not criminal.

That distinction may frustrate a lot of people reading this story, and understandably so. To the homeowner, it probably does not feel “civil” when someone destroys part of your yard without permission and then vanishes. But from a legal standpoint, that apparently leaves her chasing compensation rather than criminal accountability.

A Story That Feels Personal Even If It Is Also Legal

What gives this story staying power is not just the legal weirdness. It is how personal it feels.

Harris did not wake up looking for a legal battle. She was at home, heard noise, opened the door, and found strangers taking down trees she had chosen, lived with, and paid to maintain. By the time she understood what was happening, the damage was already done.

That is the part that makes Lehto’s skepticism land so well. A random text message is not a magic key to somebody else’s property. It is not permission. It is not ownership. And it certainly is not a substitute for knocking on the front door and confirming the work.

If anything, this case is a reminder of how vulnerable homeowners can be when a bad actor, a reckless contractor, or some unknown third party decides to act as if the rules do not matter.

There are still several questions hanging over this case.

Who is “John”? Why did two different landscaping contacts seem to have Harris’s exact address? Was this a simple wrong-address disaster, or was somebody intentionally trying to cause damage to her property? And perhaps most importantly, where is the landscaper now?

Susan El Khoury’s reporting gives the story its emotional center because Harris is plainly left with the loss. Steve Lehto’s commentary gives it its legal edge because he makes clear that “I got a text” is not the kind of excuse that should end the conversation.

And that may be the real takeaway.

This is not just a strange Florida story about palm trees. It is a story about how quickly property can be damaged when basic professionalism disappears, and how hard it can be for an ordinary homeowner to get answers once the person responsible stops picking up the phone.