The man who admits using Australian professional golfer Robert Allenby’s identification and credit cards still isn’t saying how he got them.
At his sentencing in state court Wednesday, Owen Patrick Harbison apologized to Allenby “for my role in his bad evening,” but said he “cannot say exactly how it played out.”
Allenby was not present for the sentencing.
In January when he was in Honolulu for the Sony Open in Hawaii, the golfer claimed he was drugged, kidnapped, robbed of his credit cards, thrown into the trunk of a car and dumped at a park 6.5 miles away from a Kapiolani Boulevard wine bar. He posted a picture of his injured face on Facebook that touched off a media storm and raised questions about his account. Allenby later said he couldn’t remember what happened.
Harbison, 32, pleaded guilty in June to one count each of identity theft and attempted theft, for making purchases using Allenby’s American Express card, and to one count of unauthorized possession of confidential personal information for having Allenby’s identification cards.
Circuit Judge Glenn Kim handed down the five-year prison sentence spelled out in Harbison’s plea agreement. Harbison is getting credit for the time he has already been in custody since his arrest in February. The Hawaii Paroling Authority will decide when Harbison will be eligible for parole.
For its end of the deal, the state agreed to drop two other identity theft and two other attempted theft charges and reduced the identity theft to a class C felony from a class B felony. The maximum penalty for a class B felony is 10 years in prison while the maximum prison term for a class C is five years.
Kim also re-sentenced Harbison to another five-year prison term for a 2013 felony drug conviction, for which Harbison was previously sentenced to probation. According to the plea deal in the Allenby case, Harbison will serve both five-year terms at the same time.
Deputy City Prosecutor Jacob Delaplane says Harbison used three of Allenby’s credit cards to purchase nearly $20,000 worth of clothes, liquor, boxes of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, a watch and high-dollar value gift cards from Victoria’s Secret, Zumiez, Walgreens, 7-Eleven and ABC Stores. He also says police recovered more than 60 store security video clips that show Harbison making the purchases.
Allenby told police he went to Amuse Wine Bar on Kapiolani Boulevard on Jan. 16 for dinner with his caddie and a friend after missing the weekend cut for the Sony Open.
Two homeless people told police they found Allenby on the ground across the street from the wine bar and one of them said the golfer injured himself when he passed out and hit his head on a rock.
Allenby later said his earlier account was what the homeless woman who helped him fight off his attackers told him and that he doesn’t remember what happened from the time he left the bar to when she found him.
The caddie, Mick Middlemo, said on Australian radio last month after Allenby fired him that he doesn’t believe his former employer was mugged. Middlemo said he didn’t witness what happened but, at Allenby’s urging, had previously backed up Allenby’s story to protect him. He said he believes someone picked up Allenby’s wallet after the golfer fell and hit his head.