Former Honolulu police officer and former University of Hawaii volleyball player Maulia LaBarre admitted in federal court Tuesday that he solicited sex from a woman in exchange for his help in getting her prostitution case dropped.
LaBarre, 34, pleaded guilty to one count of committing wire fraud to deprive the city of his services as a police officer by making telephone calls and sending text messages to solicit a bribe to not perform his sworn duties. He faces a maximum 20-year prison term at sentencing in October. He also faces having to pay restitution.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Nammar told U.S. District Senior Judge Susan Oki Mollway that the Honolulu Police Department has said LaBarre shouldn’t be entitled to the salary he was paid while he was committing his crime, but that he has no estimate on the amount of restitution he may request at sentencing.
In exchange for LaBarre’s guilty plea, the government has agreed to drop four other counts of wire fraud.
LaBarre admitted in his plea agreement that between Jan. 31 and April 19, 2016, he devised and carried out a scheme to deprive the city of his services as a police officer through bribery and cover-up.
He told Mollway that he looked up the woman’s telephone number on his police computer because her name came up in an unrelated case. He said he then called the woman, exchanged text messages, offered to help her with her prostitution case and met with her in person at a Starbucks.
When the woman asked what she owed him for his help, LaBarre said he told the woman that she didn’t owe him anything and that he never intended to have sex with her.
Following a short recess, during which his lawyer and Nammar explained to him that he couldn’t plead guilty if he never solicited sex from the woman, LaBarre told Mollway that he offered to help the woman to “possibly have sex with her.”
Investigators with the state Department of the Attorney General arrested LaBarre in Waikiki in April 2016 in an apparent sting. They later turned the case over to federal officials.
HPD placed LaBarre on restricted duty following his arrest, then discharged him this past May. He had been with the department just shy of nine years.
His lawyer Jeffrey Arakaki told Mollway that LaBarre has a job offer from Securitas.
LaBarre graduated from Roosevelt High School, then went on to letter in volleyball at UH in 2001, 2004, 2005 and 2006.
