A con man who changed his name and appearance multiple times and fancied himself a "master of disguise" was sentenced in state court last month to 10 years in prison for stealing nearly $100,000 from two Hawaii banks and a $6,000 diamond ring from Costco through check-kiting.
Tyler Adams won’t begin serving the 10-year term, however, until after he returns to California to complete a 14-year prison term for using his stepfather’s identity to run up more than $3 million in debt.
Circuit Judge Rom Trader could have let Adams, 41, serve the Hawaii sentence concurrently with the California prison term, but he declined.
"In my humble estimation, concurrent time seems to woefully fall short of the goals that a sentence in a criminal case such as this are required to take into account," he said.
Trader also ordered Adams to repay American Savings Bank $67,299, Bank of Hawaii $32,193 and Costco $6,178.
Adams was born Kevin Schoolcraft in Pennsylvania. After a short enlistment in the Navy in the early 1990s, he moved to California and changed his name to Kevin Kennedy, then to Tyler Adams.
In 2006 Adams used his stepfather’s identity to purchase multiple real estate properties and obtain lines of credit. He rented out the properties but didn’t pay off the mortgages.
Adams moved with his Russian-born wife to Hawaii in 2007 and into a home in Kahala, where he used the name Kevin Kennedy and four other aliases. He registered four fake businesses and a charity, deposited phony checks into their accounts and withdrew money from them before the banks realized the checks were no good.
He used another check to purchase the diamond ring. Then, within an hour of leaving Costco with the ring, Adams called the bank to stop payment on the check.
With authorities in California and Hawaii after him, Adams left the country with his wife and went to China. California authorities arrested him when he returned in November 2009.
After a number of delays due to his claims of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and his off-and-on requests to represent himself, Adams pleaded guilty in a California state court in San Diego in October 2012 to 48 felony fraud counts. A California judge sentenced Adams the following month to the 14-year prison term and ordered him to pay more than $500,000 in restitution.
Adams pleaded no contest to the Hawaii charges in October.
At his sentencing Dec. 17, Adams blamed his troubles in California and Hawaii on an unscrupulous business partner and the nationwide housing market crash.
Even though he will serve back-to-back prison terms, Adams will get credit for his time in custody before sentencing in both cases.