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More bad news for disgraced former Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha: The city wants its $250,000 retirement settlement package back.
On Monday, Kealoha was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for helping his then-deputy prosecutor wife, Katherine Kealoha, direct officers in the Honolulu Police Department’s once-elite Criminal Intelligence Unit to harass, intimidate and frame Katherine’s uncle, Gerard Puana, as part of a larger conspiracy.
On Wednesday, Mayor Kirk Caldwell said the city has begun the process to get Kealoha to return the settlement that the Honolulu Police Commission gave him in January 2017 to retire in the face of the scandal.
Louis Kealoha’s retirement was effective March 2017, and the $250,000 settlement package included the caveat that Kealoha must repay it if he was convicted of a felony. In June 2019 a federal jury convicted the Kealohas and two HPD officers of conspiracy and obstruction of justice.
“I know that a demand letter was made to the chief a while ago now,” Caldwell said Wednesday. “And I know that after the demand letter they’re going to be filing a complaint. But I don’t know if it’s been filed. … But I do believe they’re going to try to collect on that. They can convert a complaint into a judgment that can be recorded, and then it will have to be collected over time.”
The city’s going to have to wait in line before any of that money gets repaid.
The Kealohas already separately agreed to pay $165,269 to the children Katherine Kealoha was supposed to protect financially. In October 2019 she pleaded guilty to stealing their inheritance to help bankroll a lavish lifestyle the Kealohas could not afford on their own.
The Kealohas in October 2019 also agreed to forfeit $63,476 from the sale of the home they once shared. At the time, they also each agreed to make financial restitution following their 2019 convictions as part of a pre-sentencing agreement.
The pair each agreed to pay $289,714 to their victims, including $46,261 to Puana and $243,453 to Katherine Kealoha’s grandmother Florence Puana, whom Kealoha conned into a reverse mortgage that Kealoha stole.
In separate sentencing hearings on Monday, Chief U.S. District Court Judge J. Michael Seabright also ordered the Kealohas to each pay $455,684.78 in restitution.
Gerard Puana told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser after the sentences that he does not expect to see any of the money owed him from either of the Kealohas because of their overwhelming financial burdens.
Seabright also suggested that the Kealohas’ ability to pay is further complicated by any settlement in their pending divorce.
As part of his retirement after 33 years with HPD, Kealoha also receives a pension and health coverage.
His annual salary was $182,088.
While all of the convicted co-conspirators in the trial are now headed for federal prison, more sentences related to the conspiracy and cover-up are scheduled to be handed out on Jan. 19 by Seabright.
In addition to seven years for Louis Kealoha, 60, Seabright sentenced Katherine Kealoha, the now 50-year-old mastermind of the conspiracy and botched cover-up, to 13 years in federal prison Monday.
Then on Tuesday former HPD “footman” Minh-Hung “Bobby” Nguyen, 46, received a federal prison sentence of 4-1/2 years.
Although Nguyen was the lowest-ranking CIU member, he had been married to Katherine Kealoha’s niece, lived in the Kealohas’ pool house and played a critical role in carrying out the Kealohas’ efforts to frame Puana.
Former HPD Lt. Derek Wayne Hahn, a 48-year-old, married father of children ages 10 and 12, was sentenced to 3-1/2 years.
None of the three men facing sentences from Seabright on Jan. 19 were prosecuted with the Kealohas.
But all three have pleaded guilty to lying to either federal investigators, a federal grand jury or both to cover up some aspect of their roles in helping Katherine Kealoha con her grandmother and frame her uncle.
Kealoha encouraged two of the men facing prison time to lie on her behalf: her ex-lover, a former Hawaii County fire battalion chief; and Ransen Taito, who was 18 when Katherine Kealoha ordered him to perjure himself before a federal grand jury to say that Kealoha had repaid the $165,000 inheritance she stole from Taito and his sibling.
After stealing their inheritance, Kealoha then had Taito sign multiple false documents to cover the theft and lie about it to the grand jury.
If Taito didn’t lie, Kealoha threatened to have their mother thrown in jail, according to Taito’s plea agreement.
Taito had just turned 18 in August 2010 when Kealoha asked him to sign the first of several bogus documents, according to Taito’s plea agreement.
Up through October 2017, Taito admitted that he corrupted and obstructed the investigation of the Kealohas in many ways, including by refusing to speak to the FBI, avoiding a federal grand jury subpoena, preparing to lie before the grand jury and creating more false and misleading documents.
Former Hawaii County Fire Battalion Chief Jesse Michael Ebersole also faces time in federal prison after admitting in July 2018 that he lied to a federal grand jury to mask his romantic affair with Katherine Kealoha, who was still married to Louis Kealoha.
Ebersole met Katherine Kealoha in 2009 when they became Pacific Century Fellows, followed by Kealoha “showering Ebersole with gifts and financial benefits,” according to his 2018 plea agreement.
Between 2004 and 2017, federal prosecutors said, the Kealohas opened and controlled over 30 separate bank accounts. In October 2019 they pleaded individually to bank fraud.
Katherine Kealoha was supposed to use the funds in a Bank of Hawaii account to pay off the reverse mortgage on her grandmother’s home — as Kealoha had promised. Instead, Florence Puana ended up losing her home.
Rather than honor her promise to her grandmother, federal prosecutors said, Kealoha used the stolen reverse mortgage money in the Bank of Hawaii account for more than $20,000 in expenses for Ebersole, including a 2009 cashier’s check to him in the amount of $1,387.12 and Hawaiian Airlines tickets and hotel rooms in Hilo and Honolulu for Ebersole and Kealoha to fly to and from Hilo and Honolulu to rendezvous.
The cashier’s check was made out to Ebersole in the name of a nonexistent notary that Kealoha created named “Alison Lee Wong” to vouch for some of her bogus, sometimes error-ridden documents.
In her federal case, Kealoha is identified by several names, including “Katherine P. Kealoha,” “Katherine E. Kealoha,” “Kathy Kealoa” and “Alison Lee Wong.”
The cashier’s check had the phrase “EPA Review” written in the memo line and was supposedly a “‘a bonus’ for a no-show job at an ‘environmental company’ Kealoha claimed to control,” according to Ebersole’s plea agreement.
The FBI began investigating in 2014.
Between April and October 2017, prosecutors said in court documents, Kealoha and Ebersole began conspiring “to corruptly obstruct, influence, and impede an official proceeding.”
Kealoha coached Ebersole in April 2017 about how to lie and perjure himself before a federal grand jury about their relationship.
Ebersole told the grand jury they were just “friends” and that he had “no idea” why his name was on Kealoha’s credit card statements.
During a second appearance before the grand jury, a month later, Kealoha then arranged for an attorney to represent Ebersole “to delay and impede his truthful testimony,” prosecutors said. When he did appear, Ebersole failed to produce documents and answer questions.
During a third grand jury appearance in October 2017, Ebersole again lied and testified that he and Kealoha were only “friends,” that they did not have a “romantic” relationship and that he was “baffled” why airline tickets in his name appeared on Kealoha’s credit card statement.
Former HPD officer Niall Silva also faces sentencing before Seabright in January on the same day as Taito and Ebersole.
Silva pleaded guilty in December 2016 to conspiracy and later testified as a government witness at the Kealohas’ trial in 2019.
Silva testified on the fourth day of the 16-day trial that he had repeatedly lied about his role in the effort to frame Gerard Puana.
As part of Silva’s plea agreement, he admitted to falsifying police reports, lying to federal investigators and perjuring himself in court by falsely claiming that Puana was the person captured on home surveillance video stealing the Kealohas’ mailbox in front of their home.
Silva was among CIU members who had a flurry of phone calls and texts with Katherine Kealoha during key moments of the FBI investigation, such as when U.S. Postal Service investigators began asking questions of CIU members about the theft of the mailbox and the handling of the bogus, shadowy surveillance video.
Silva and other CIU members lied to investigators and later perjured themselves in identifying Puana as the thief on the video.
Silva also played a key role in handling the video hard drive and falsely said that he had retrieved it from the Kealoha home.
The lie was part of a broader effort to make the investigation of the mailbox theft appear legitimate to avoid suspicion.
The hard drive was actually removed by Nguyen, a seemingly benign act.
But Seabright suggested in court that Nguyen’s involvement with a critical piece of evidence to frame Gerard Puana might raise suspicions as a Kealoha family member, resident of the property and the lowest-ranking CIU member with no technical expertise.
The video was later overridden at CIU in a ham-handed effort when someone pointed the camera upward and recorded the CIU ceiling for hours to try to erase the original footage that would have shown Nguyen retrieving the hard drive.
To this day, Seabright said, it remains unknown to investigators and authorities who actually portrayed the purported mailbox thief in the video.
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Staff writer Gordon Y.K. Pang contributed to this report.
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