The former managing partner of one of the state’s largest accounting firms used at least some of the money he stole from the firm to pay for travel and lavish hotel stays for himself and his girlfriend and told his partners that one of the phony companies he made up to steal the money was working with the CIA, according to state court records.
Patrick Oki, 46, is facing charges that he stole more than $500,000 from PKF Pacific Hawaii LLP between January 2011 and January 2014. An Oahu grand jury returned an indictment in April charging him with theft, money laundering, using a computer to commit the crimes and forgery.
Oki pleaded not guilty to the charges and is scheduled to stand trial in January. He remains free on $250,000 bail.
The indictment lists as complainants Lawrence Chew, Deneen Nakashima, Trisha Nomura and Dwayne Takeno. They were PKF partners at the time Oki allegedly committed the crimes but later left the firm.
Oki told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that he was majority owner of PKF at the time of the alleged offenses. Last week, new partners executed a buyout agreement and Oki no longer has an interest in the firm.
The prosecutor’s office says in court documents filed in anticipation of the trial that Oki, a certified public accountant and certified fraud examiner, stole $503,089 using four separate and distinct fraudulent schemes against PKF by collecting reimbursement for unauthorized expenses he claimed he paid out of his own pocket for clients. The clients were supposed to repay the money to PKF but they never did because the clients were from a phony company Oki had made up. And a real company, Sumitomo, that Oki claimed was a client of PKF and did business with two of his phony companies had no business relationship with any of them, according to the prosecutor’s office.
The prosecutor’s office says Oki not only created phony companies and contracts, he created fictitious people, false IRS forms, invoices, financial documents, websites and email addresses. Oki also made false entries in PKF books and forged signatures of the phony people he created to deceive his fellow partners, according to the prosecutor’s office.
One of the phony companies, Asia Market, has the same name as a New York grocery store, according to the prosecutor’s office. The Asia Market address Oki provided his partners is an empty warehouse. The address Oki provided for another phony company is an empty parking lot in Bridgeport, Conn.
To collect some of the stolen money, the prosecutor’s office says Oki used his Square and PayPal online payment accounts to draw funds from his PKF credit card and then transferred the money to his personal bank accounts. And because he created the phony email addresses using his GoDaddy Web hosting account, he sent email messages to himself to create the illusion that there was communication from the phony people and companies he created.
Some of the false financial records Oki showed his partners included copies of personal checks that showed no indication that they were ever negotiated and bank statements that were so poorly doctored that even a lay person would realize they were fake, the prosecutor’s office says.
The other PKF partners grew suspicious of Oki’s claimed reimbursements but were not able to refute the fake bank records until they called police, who subpoenaed the actual records. Oki also told his partners that Sumitomo and one of the phony companies were working with the CIA when they pressed him for information, according to the prosecutor’s office.
The prosecutor’s office says charges on Oki’s PKF credit card for 2013 hotel stays in Singapore, New York’s Crowne Plaza and Waikiki’s Trump Hotel “provide(s) the strongest evidence of why (Oki) engaged in fraud and criminal activity against PKF and (his) partners.”
Oki told his partners that he was paying for travel and entertainment expenses for Sumitomo officials, according to the prosecutor’s office. The credit card invoices indicate that the hotel guest was Sumitomo official Kishi Sato. The state says that according to hotel records, the actual guest was Eunae Lee, Oki’s girlfriend, who is not affiliated with Sumitomo.
The prosecutor’s office says that PKF discovered thousands of dollars in other unauthorized charges on Oki’s company credit card for airfare, lodging, dining, car rental and general travel-related expenses in Tokyo; Osaka and Kyoto, Japan; Hong Kong; Singapore; and South Korea.