The U.S. Department of Justice wants the former business manager of a Hawaii labor union who was convicted of rigging a vote to raise dues and using members’ money to fund his family’s lavish lifestyle to serve 14 years in federal prison.

A federal jury found Brian Ahakuelo, 62, former elected business manager and financial secretary of the Inter­national Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local Union 1260, and his wife, Marilyn Ahakuelo, 59, guilty Nov. 21 of one count of conspiracy and 42 counts of wire fraud.

Brian Ahakuelo was also convicted of 19 counts of money laundering. Marilyn Ahakuelo was sentenced March 28 to 70 months in federal prison.

Brian Ahakuelo will be sentenced at 1:30 p.m. today before Senior U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor.

He was elected business manager and financial secretary of Local 1260 in June 2011, reelected in 2014 and served until May 2016, when IBEW placed Local 1260 in an emergency trusteeship.

Following 14 years in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice would like Ahaku­elo to spend three years on supervised release. He should pay restitution in the amount recommended by the U.S. Probation Office, $209,391.72, and a forfeiture money judgment, previously entered March 15, of $60,212.49, according to DOJ.

Ahakuelo’s attorney, Caroline M. Elliot, asked the court to sentence her client, a U.S. Army veteran whose father once led the same union, to the 140 months recommended by the U.S. Probation office. Ahakuelo, who has “no prior criminal history,” having to go to prison for over 10 years will “obviously serve as a deterrent to criminal conduct.”

“Mr. Ahakuelo is not solely defined by these offenses. For 62 years, he has been a loving husband, father, grandfather, and friend to many in this community. Mr. Ahakuelo requests the Court follow probation’s recommendation of a 140-month sentence,” wrote Elliot, in her sentencing memo filed June 15.

She included dozens of letters from family members, co-workers and friends attesting to Aha­- ku­elo’s faith, selflessness, integrity and character.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael F. Albanese, in a sentencing memo filed June 13, noted that Aha­- ku­elo inherited a union that was “financially sound, had $700,000 in cash reserves and owned a building worth approximately five million dollars.”

He “drastically increased” local union spending by hiring additional staff, including five family members — his wife, sister-in-law, son, daughter-in-law and son-in-law — and increased “the frequency and extravagance of local union travel.”

The Ahakuelo family received about $600,000 a year in salary and Aha­kuelo also increased pay for a woman he had an extramarital affair with, according to the memo.

In less than five years, Ahakuelo spent all of the union’s reserves, requiring a dues increase to keep the organization solvent. A vote on the dues increase was rigged by Ahakuelo and several co-conspirators. He sold the union’s most valuable asset, an office building on Beretania Street, and burned through half of the proceeds to support operating income prior to the dues increase, according to Albanese’s memo.

He locked the local union into “an expensive, 12.5 year lease in TOPA Tower” costing about $250,000 per year, and spent about the same amount on the build-out of the leased space, “an expenditure that will be lost when the lease expires.”

“For all of his ambition to increase union participation and membership, he left the union with fewer members than when he took office — 3,057 at the end of 2011, down to 2,891 at the end of 2015,” Albanese wrote.

After he was removed, Ahakuelo worked as a delivery driver from September 2020 through January 2021, but was suspended after “he was suspected of stealing a parcel.”

He then worked as a box truck driver from April through September 2021, but was fired for failing to report an accident and damage to the company vehicle, according to federal court documents.

Ahakuelo has a “negative total net worth” and more than $170,000 in credit card, student loan and vehicle loan debt. He and his wife also bought a a Mercedes-Benz in 2021, at a “time when this case was pending and the defendant (and his wife) were relying on court-­appointed counsel.”

“In short, the defendant conducted his personal finances in the same manner he conducted the finances of the local union — spending well in excess of income, with no actual ability or intention to pay the bill when it came due. While this mindset is regrettable when it comes to family finances, it is criminal when held by a person entrusted to protect the property of hard-working union members,” wrote Albanese.