A 29-year-old man pleaded guilty Wednesday to working with a Honolulu police officer to try to extort $15,000 from the owners of a Honolulu hostess bar.

Jeremy Javillo pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to interfere with commerce by threats and violence.

His co-defendant, former officer Roddy Tsunezumi, pleaded guilty to the same count Wednesday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Sorenson said Tsunezumi and Javillo tried to extort money from two owners of a hostess bar who approached Tsunezumi about a possible robbery and kidnapping plot against them.

He said Tsunezumi, who was a police officer at the time, told the owners that they should hire Javillo for protection rather than go to police, who would be ineffective and could help only after a crime occurred.

Javillo told the owners the protection would cost $15,000, to be split with Tsunezumi, Sorenson said.

Javillo told U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson that he bought a phone and sent one of the owners threatening text messages "to convince them that something would happen so we could get money."

The extortion occurred between June 2013 and October.

As part of the plea agreement, government attorneys dismissed a second charge against Tsunezumi and Javillo that accused them of vehicle identification number fraud. That charge stemmed from the men allegedly switching the vehicle identification numbers on stolen vehicles with numbers from junked or salvaged vehicles to sell the stolen vehicles from August 2011 to October.

Tsunezumi, 38, resigned from the force in April after nine years of service. He was last assigned to the department’s traffic division.

The men each face up to 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release when they are sentenced in November. They were released on $50,000 unsecured bond.