A 42-year-old, newly adopted Maui man who stands to inherit $70 million from a millionaire’s estate had previously inherited a Kula gasoline station from one elderly woman and a Kula home from another, according to court documents.
Hans M. Kanuha was adopted by millionaire Laurence H. Dorcy on April 4, just two months before Dorcy died at Straub Clinic & Hospital at the age of 76, leaving his fortune to his newly adopted son.
Nine years before, according to court documents, Kanuha met an 82-year-old Kula woman named Margot Heeseman "who was a recluse and completely isolated from her family."
On Nov. 12, 2002, Heeseman deeded her residence to Kanuha and gave him power of attorney, according to the documents.
The same year, Kanuha discovered that his friend Toby Rogoff was diagnosed with stomach cancer, according to documents. Kanuha was earning about $1,000 a month in gross income at the time, according to the documents.
Within a year, Rogoff died, and Kanuha ended up with Rogoff’s leasehold interest in her Kula business, Calasa’s Gas Station.
"In effect," according to court documents, "Mrs. Heeseman and Ms. Rogoff were ‘dry runs’ for Mr. Dorcy."
Kanuha did not respond to a request for an interview left with his attorney.
It was at Calasa’s Gas Station in 2002 where Kanuha met Dorcy while pumping gas into Dorcy’s cars.
Dorcy — the descendant of an American railroad magnate — was known to friends as "The Baron" and was unmarried and had no children.
Dorcy originally intended to leave his estate to more than two dozen charities in Hawaii and on the mainland, including the USS Missouri, Fort DeRussy Museum and Salvation Army.
Attorneys representing some of the charities are hoping for a March trial date on Maui to determine who will get Dorcy’s assets, and the state attorney general’s office hopes to join the case later this month.
Kanuha was born in Honolulu on June 27, 1969, to Pearl Momi Kanuha and Crosby Kanuha Sr.
He graduated from Baldwin High School on Maui, began working as a private branch exchange operator at Maui Memorial Hospital at the age of 18, then transferred to patient admitting, then to medical billing and coding, according to court documents.
After he left Maui Memorial, Kanuha continued working in medical billing and coding for private doctors.
Then, in 2004, he purchased Calasa’s Gas Station "using unknown financial resources," according to court documents.
The following year, Kanuha bought a 25-year leasehold interest in the Morihara Store for about $250,000 through a purported loan, according to the documents.
Then in 2008 he bought the fee-simple interest in the store’s property for $835,000 — using an $800,000 loan from Dorcy, according to the documents.
The loan carried an approximately $10,000 monthly mortgage payment.
Just a few months after signing the mortgage, according to court documents, Kanuha told Dorcy he was having trouble making the payments and wanted to see whether they could "work something out," but were unable to reach agreement.
"Six months into the mortgage, on June 28, 2008, Hans (Kanuha) decided to work things out for himself, and made a $6,000 cash investment to Ko Hawaii Pae Aina (‘KHPA’), a group of organized scam artists to purchase a Bond and Trust that he understood would effectively erase all of Hans’ debt, including the mortgage debt that he owed Mr. Dorcy," according to court documents. "Thus, Hans began to scam Mr. Dorcy as early as 2008."
In his own court documents, Kanuha said that he repaid more than $200,000 on the mortgage and "sometime in mid-2010, the Baron told me don’t worry about making payments."
"During the 10 or more years that I have known the Baron, he has been the person in charge, the ‘Baron’, or the ‘CAP’, (‘Captain’). … As to my adoption by the Baron, at no time did I suggest, encourage, or attempt to persuade the Baron, in any way, to adopt me. Although the Baron had mentioned adopting me in the past, I never thought he was actually serious about it since it was an unusual thing to do."
