Acting on a tip from a frustrated citizen, federal investigators uncovered an alleged bribery scheme and charged the former director of the Maui County Department of Environmental Management with taking $2 million in cash, gambling trips and casino chips to steer $19 million in contracts to a Honolulu wastewater executive’s companies.

For his role in the bribery scheme, Stewart Olani Stant, 55, was charged Aug. 31 with conspiracy to deprive the public of their right to honest services. Charged with bribery of a federally funded program was Milton J. Choy, owner and manager of H2O Processes LLC and Central Pacific Controls LLC.

After his arrest, Choy became the government informant who helped the FBI set up a sting operation that led to the arrest two former state lawmakers, both of whom pleaded guilty to taking money.

“This was reported to us by somebody who saw something and didn’t think it looked right,” said U.S. Attorney Clare Connors at a news conference Thursday in her office. “(This person) saw a substantial amount of work going to one particular company, saw a lot of money being received by this company, and it didn’t look right so they reported it to law enforcement.”

The charging documents were unsealed Thursday in U.S. District Court.

During the six-year arrangement, Stant allegedly accepted $733,176 in checks and fund transfers from Oct. 25, 2012, to Sept. 24, 2018, and $644,570 in cash was deposited into two of his bank accounts, according to the documents. Those transfers and checks ranged from $2,000 to more than $59,000, the documents said, while the cash deposits ranged from $1,000 to $20,000.

From 2012 to 2018, Choy bribed Stant with cash, bank deposits, airfare and hotel rooms in Las Vegas in exchange for “lucrative sole-source contracts” from Maui County’s Department of Environmental Management.

“These were trips to Las Vegas that were paid for by Mr. Choy for Mr. Stant. These were thousands of dollars in … casino chips that were provided to Mr. Stant by Mr. Choy, also hotels and other benefits,” Connors said. “Despite being required by the Maui County Charter to disclose any and all gifts that were received … while Mr. Stant was a public official, he disclosed none of it.”

Connors said the alleged pay-to-play setup is one of the largest uncovered in Hawaii.

During that same time period, Stant, working first as a wastewater manager and then as department director, approved 56 sole-source contracts worth $19.31 million to Choy’s company, H20 Processes, to provide wastewater services, including distributing, installing and consulting on various wastewater equipment and parts, such as pumps and filtration units.

“They were emboldened to continue the scheme for many years until their greed caught up with them,” said Steven Merrill, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Honolulu Division.

By allegedly taking bribes to steer contracts to Choy’s company and failing to disclose them, Stant conspired to “commit honest services wire fraud and deprived the citizens of Maui County of their right to his honest and conflict-free services as a public official,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Stant and Choy are not in federal custody and will be arraigned Monday.

If convicted, Stant faces a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000; Choy faces a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. The government indicated it will seek to seize more than $15 million from Choy and more than $2 million from Stant in forfeiture proceedings should they be convicted.

Stant did disclose his affinity for gambling in Las Vegas casinos on county financial disclosure forms and to a Maui newspaper.

On March 18, 2018, he told The Maui News that he won $33,000 in 2017 at Harrah’s in Las Vegas. The paper reported that Stant’s December 2015 county financial disclosure form showed he won between $50,000 and $99,000 gambling.

Choy’s attorney, Michael Green, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser he has represented Choy for two years and that Choy will enter a guilty plea Monday as part of an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, pending approval from a judge.

“It’s a lot of money, and it’s for a long period of time,” said Green of the bribery allegations.

Stant, an Eagle Scout and Air Force veteran, did not immediately return a Star-Advertiser request for comment.

On his Instagram account Tuesday, Stant, dressed in a blue, long-sleeve, button- down shirt and jeans, posted a photo of himself smiling and flashing a shaka and announced that “this will be my final post on Social Media for a while.”

“I love reading many of your posts especially the positive &uplifting ones,” he wrote. “I will be disconnecting &focusing on a few other things right now. See you later FB/IG (Facebook/Instagram).”

In a February interview with the Politics on Maui website, Stant said: “The feds can look at any records they like, there’s nothing that we have to hide.

“Milton is one of my best friends. He’s like a brother to me,” he said. “I should have thought about that more, but, again, those contracts were in process for years before I became director. And my relationship with Milton was decades.”

Stant said he met Choy in 1992 while working as an electrician’s helper in Kihei and that Choy attended his wedding. He told Politics on Maui that he had a blue- collar background, no college degree and should have thought more about taking the director’s job because he didn’t “speak political.”

The Maui County Board of Ethics did not immediately reply to a Star-Advertiser question about whether a formal ethics complaint prompted the tip to federal investigators.

The investigation was conducted by the FBI; the prosecution is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ken Sorenson, Micah Smith and Michael Albanese.

Once Choy was arrested for his role in the Maui County case, he began cooperating with the Department of Justice and helped federal agents pursue a case against two former state lawmakers, who were later charged with taking bribes.

Connors acknowledged during Thursday’s news conference that Choy is “Person A,” who is referred to in federal court documents as the person who bribed and then helped bring down former state Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English, 55, of Maui, and former state Rep. Ty J.K. Cullen, 41, who represented Central Oahu.

The documents outline how the two lawmakers introduced, managed and killed legislation at Choy’s request in exchange for casino chips, cash, hotel rooms and dinners for family members.

Choy was one of the first people arrested in the ongoing corruption probe and began cooperating with the government early on, Connors said. He was not charged with bribing Cullen and English.

English was sentenced in July to 40 months in federal prison for accepting $18,305 in cash from Choy in exchange for inside information on the Legislature and managing legislation to benefit H20 Process Systems between 2014 and 2021.

Cullen is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 20.