Widespread corruption begins with small, illegal behavior

Unethical and criminal behavior from people in positions of trust in most cases begins simply enough.

An elected official accepts a free lunch. A bookkeeper short on cash takes $100 with the intent of paying it back. Employees at the city’s Department of Permitting and Planning welcome malasadas from people trying to get their projects approved.

The justifications for violating the faith placed in them by constituents, local families, churches, community groups and businesses can vary.

They typically boil down to: Entitlement. Hubris. Feeling unappreciated and underpaid. Or, even more cynically: Everyone else does it.

Their betrayal and the price tag of their crimes escalates until they’re caught, criminal charges are filed, reputations are ruined and offenders end up in state jails or federal prisons.

“Things start small and innocuous,” said Alexander Silvert, who retired in 2020 as a federal deputy public defender after representing dozens of white-collar defendants. “Then it becomes incremental. You do that a few times and then you do something that’s a little more serious and complicated and worse. And then it’s a pattern you fall into, and it gets larger and larger. These are not one-offs.”

Here are some recent examples in Hawaii:

>> In 2010, Paulo Salas-Selem, then 40, of Kapolei, pleaded guilty to stealing $11,500 from the Makakilo-Kapolei-Honokai Hale Little League as the organization’s treasurer.

>> In 2016, Nina Moore, then 36, admitted embezzling $13,368 from the Makakilo-Kapolei Youth Baseball League and stealing an additional $7,033 from clients at the accounting firm where she worked.

>> In 2018, Riki Maeda, then 57, pleaded guilty to stealing $180,203 as treasurer of the Hawaii Youth Soccer Association’s Maui Youth League. Maeda had written an estimated 80 to 90 unauthorized checks to himself from the league’s bank account.

>> In 2018, Lola Jean Amorin, then 70, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for stealing nearly $7 million from the Arc of Hawaii, an organization that provides services to children and adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities. She had worked for the organization for more than 30 years.

>> In 2020, federal charges were filed against five former and then-current employees of the Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting for allegedly accepting bribes to complete official city business. People doing business with DPP at the time told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that it was common practice to bring employees malasadas to get preferential treatment.

>> Also in 2020, former Honolulu Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha and her estranged husband, disgraced Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha, were sentenced in federal court to prison terms of 13 and seven years, respectively, after trying to frame Katherine’s uncle, Gerard Puana — one of Silvert’s clients.

The frame job was a complex — but ultimately botched — attempt to discredit Puana and cover up a larger scheme engineered by Katherine Kealoha to steal the proceeds from her grandmother’s reverse mortgage to fuel the couple’s lavish lifestyle. The Kealohas spent $135,000 of Florence Puana’s money on Elton John tickets that cost $2,000; $23,976 for breakfast at the Sheraton Waikiki to celebrate Louis Kealoha’s promotion to chief; a $13,000 cashier’s check for a lease on a Maserati; and two payments four days apart totaling more than $5,000 for a Mercedes-Benz.

Their crimes included conspiracy, attempted obstruction of justice and bank fraud. Katherine Kealoha also pleaded guilty to using her position to conceal the drug distribution activities of her brother, Rudolph Puana.

Katherine Kealoha’s ex-boss, former Honolulu Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro, received a “target letter” from the Department of Justice in 2018 but has not been charged.

>> On Jan. 12, former city Managing Director Roy Amemiya, former Corporation Counsel Donna Leong and former Honolulu Police Commission Chairman Max Sword turned themselves in to the FBI after their attorneys were notified they would be arrested for allegedly conspiring to divert $250,000 in government funds to a retirement settlement for Louis Kealoha and then conceal the scheme.

All three pleaded not guilty and are free on $50,000 bonds pending their trial in federal court, scheduled for June 13.

>> Then on Tuesday, retired state Sen. J. Kalani English and Rep. Ty J.K. Cullen were charged by the DOJ with accepting cash, Las Vegas hotel rooms, dinners and casino chips in New Orleans in exchange for introducing measures, killing legislation and relaying inside information to a Hawaii industrial services company and its principal.

Both English and Cullen, who resigned his House seat right before the charges were announced, are expected to plead guilty on Tuesday in U.S. District Court as part of a plea deal.

‘The slippery slope’

Retired University of Hawaii criminologist Meda Chesney-Lind said the motivation to steal money and betray positions of trust — whether it’s a small-time bookkeeper, the chief of police or an elected official — begins with a lack of oversight and accountability.

“It happens in organizations where there’s not heavy accountability around money,” she said. “We’ve had waves of these where there’s a lot of money sloshing around and not much oversight. And then people get more and more casual about taking things they shouldn’t be taking.”

The temptation gets worse “when you see other people doing something unethical and corrupt and there are no consequences,” Chesney-Lind said. “Eventually you’re going to be tempted to try.”

Especially for politicians, Chesney-Lind said, “you begin to expect there’s deference. You get a lot of attention if you’re a local politician, and you get these markers of power that you begin to get accustomed to. It can start with a ‘free’ $200 lunch or a couple of tickets to a concert. That’s the slippery slope.”

The price of selling their elected offices can be a few thousand dollars or tens of thousands of dollars — as alleged in the charges against English — but the ultimate price will be far higher for English and Cullen and anyone else they may potentially provide evidence on to federal prosecutors, Chesney-Lind said.

“Your career is over,” she said. “You’re going to be a pariah. This is going to be a blight on them for decades.”

Before he became a Circuit Court judge, Randal Lee successfully prosecuted former city Housing Department employee Michael Kahapea in 2000 for stealing millions of dollars from the city’s ill-fated Ewa Villages project.

Kahapea diverted $5.8 million from the Ewa Villages relocation fund to himself, family and friends through bogus moving companies and false and inflated moving expenses. He used the money on frequent trips to Las Vegas, where casinos came to recognize him as a high roller, and even chartered a plane there for friends and family.

Lee focused on prosecuting white-collar crimes and handled 40 cases in just his last year as a deputy prosecutor. After retiring from the bench, where he also oversaw white-collar embezzlement, Lee now teaches criminal justice at Hawaii Pacific University.

Stealing from youth sports leagues, small businesses and churches “happens a lot,” Lee said. “A lot of times the employee has been there a long duration of time and built up a position of trust where people never check what they’re doing.”

Lee also suspects the federal charges against legislators English and Cullen are “just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Generally people come in with perhaps honorable intentions,” he said. “But with these positions come all of these benefits and trappings like a trip, a dinner or cash in an envelope.

“When Sen. English started, he wasn’t the majority leader. But he gained more power and held more authority. … I’m pretty sure that there are other politicians who have received the dinners, the money, the trips. These people justify that they’re entitled to it. They will never admit their mistakes, they will never admit their error. They will say, ‘I did nothing wrong. Other people got the same donations or the same money.’”

Formidable feds

During his 16 years as head of the city’s Ethics Commission, Chuck Totto gave mandatory annual ethics training to city employees, which expanded to include everyone from the mayor on down and members of city boards and commissions. Each person had to attend a 90-minute or so presentation every two years.

In the first few years, surveys showed overwhelming support for the sessions from employees, who also wanted City Council members and department supervisors to undergo ethics training.

When then-City Councilwoman Rene Mansho attended an ethics training, Totto was initially impressed that she seemed to be furiously scribbling notes.

“She gets it,” Totto thought, only to be told later that Mansho actually was filling out unrelated paperwork and documents.

Then in 2002, Mansho resigned the City Council seat she held for almost 14 years after being charged with two counts of felony theft for misusing more than $20,000 of city money and $300 of her campaign funds.

Mansho served a year at the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Kailua, followed by five years’ probation.

With about 10,000 people working for the city or serving on city boards and commissions, “99% of people in government want to do the right thing, the right way,” Totto said.

Even if he’s right, that means about 100 others who represent the city have little interest in following ethical behavior, he said.

“Ethics training doesn’t reach everybody,” Totto said. “There are going to be people in the back of the room with their arms crossed. They’re already gone.”

Totto and his then-investigator, former HPD Capt. Letha DeCaires, tried to investigate allegations of corruption at DPP but got little cooperation.

The attitude at DPP, Totto said, was, “My boss is doing it. Why should I hold back?”

“Our difficulty was finding witnesses who would break through that wall of silence. It speaks to the environment at some city departments.”

When Totto and DeCaires began looking into allegations involving the former police chief and his wife, the Kealohas repeatedly — and unsuccessfully — sued the Ethics Commission.

Even though the Kealohas lost in court, Totto and DeCaires were nevertheless told to back off, so he forwarded the information he had to federal investigators.

Before he retired in 2016, Totto said, his office was looking into about 100 cases every year.

“Since then,” he said, “it’s down to maybe a dozen.” 

The city Ethics Commission said that it actually reviewed 58 complaints in fiscal year 2018; 108 in fiscal year 2019; 90 in fiscal year 2020; and 128 in fiscal year 2021. 

It’s appropriate that federal authorities are taking the lead in the latest corruption charges, Totto said. 

“When you’ve got the FBI and U.S. Attorney (Clare Connors) involved, you’ve got a formidable force without the political repercussions,” he said.

Silvert believes it’s the Justice Department’s proper role “to handle corruption cases. … To me, the feds are doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

“It’s not necessarily a failure of state law enforcement,” he said. “It’s more that the federal government has the resources and is better equipped to pursue these prosecutions. … There is a feeling that there’s general corruption in state government and there’s little that can be done about it, and the only people willing to do anything is the federal government.”

Doug Chin, a former city prosecutor, state attorney general and lieutenant governor, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in an email:

“Among public officials and people who hold positions of trust, most follow the rules, but there have always been and probably will always be bad actors. Where I see it happen is when a person stops viewing what they do as a privilege and starts feeling entitled to extra perks. They feel entitled because they are under pressure, not well paid or getting too much praise. When someone starts to feel entitled, the right thing to do would be to get help or quit, but both of those are hard. That is how we end up with these cases.”

Changing the culture

Silvert, whose defense of Gerard Puana exposed the Kealohas’ corruption, has written a book titled, “The Mailbox Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Greatest Corruption Case in Hawaii History.”

Because of his role in the Kealoha case, Silvert hears from people in Hawaii who allege similar graft and corruption and want his help.

Silvert grew up in New Jersey and Philadelphia, where he started his career as a federal public defender. He said Hawaii’s level of corruption is not nearly as widespread as it is in other big cities.

“But people (in Hawaii) want to say, ‘This is a few bad apples and they’re gone.’ That’s not correct. It’s systemic.”

Chesney-Lind, the criminologist, said the corruption in Hawaii at high levels of power is particularly troubling.

“We have key players in the criminal justice system, like our former prosecutor, who are under scrutiny and, in some cases, under lock and key,” she said. “No, it’s not New Jersey. But it’s not uncommon.”

There are no shortage of proposals to reduce the opportunities for corruption. They include implementing reforms at the state and city ethics commissions, such as adding staffing and autonomy, and changing who appoints commission members.

Campaign spending laws and penalties could be tightened, including a ban on any politician serving in office who violates campaign spending laws, and establishing term limits would prevent lawmakers from staying in office for sometimes decades.

Also, voters should be encouraged to pressure candidates running for re-election this year to make true oversight reforms.

Following the Kealoha convictions, Silvert said there were plenty of promises of ethics reforms and oversight, but little progress. He believes changes can begin if a younger generation of progressive candidates gets elected to the Legislature this year.

With the 2022 election just months away and another round of scandals unfolding in real time, “now we have another chance to change the culture here,” according to Silvert. “I’m hopeful that the public will force our politicians to change.”

A history of corruption in … by Honolulu Star-Advertiser

A history of corruption in … by Honolulu Star-Advertiser