The Delta Air Lines employee accused of using her airline credentials to bypass security checkpoints to transport hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal drug sale proceeds to the mainland is also a veteran state prison guard.
Sifatutupu Fuamatu has been an adult corrections officer at the state Women’s Community Correctional Center for 17 years, Fuamatu’s lawyer, Randall Hironaka, said Monday in U.S. District Court.
Joe W. Booker Jr., deputy director of the state Department of Public Safety’s Corrections Division, confirmed Monday that Fuamatu is an adult corrections officer at WCCC.
Federal prosecutor Jonathan Loo had asked the court to order Fuamatu and three of the other four defendants who were arrested and charged last week with conspiracy to possess and distribute methamphetamine to remain in custody without the opportunity for bail pending trial.
The other three are Larry Chung, Lloyd Talia and Fuamatu’s husband, Falefia Fuamatu. The fifth defendant is Walter Dominguez, whom investigators identified as the methamphetamine supplier.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Richard L. Puglisi ordered Chung and Talia held without bail and ordered Falefia Fuamatu released into the custody of his brother, which is what the court’s Pretrial Services recommended.
Pretrial Services had recommended that Sifatutupu Fuamatu be released to a halfway house.
Loo opposed that recommendation because he said Fuamatu has access to large amounts of money. He said she and her husband transported $554,000 to Dominguez in November.
Puglisi ordered Fuamatu held without bail because Hironaka said Fuamatu would rather remain in custody than go to the halfway house.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement says the five defendants are responsible for sending large quantities of methamphetamine to Hawaii and sending hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sale of the drug back to Dominguez in California from June to January.
A criminal complaint filed in court last week alleges Dominguez arranged for the transportation of the drugs from California by using a Delta Air Lines or Transportation Security Administration employee to bypass security and place 30- to 40-pound shipments of drugs in luggage that had already gone through screening.
