When Honolulu businessman Dennis Mitsunaga and his associates allegedly sought to bribe the county prosecutor into pursuing a certain case, they aimed to flood his campaign with donations, according to federal prosecutors. 

But state law limits donors to giving $4,000 per county candidate. To increase the funding to former Honolulu prosecuting attorney Keith Kaneshiro, prosecutors say some of the donations were made in the names of people who were not the real donors, which is a state felony. 

The feds say these false-name contributions were part of an established campaign financing scheme Mitsunaga had been operating for years to sway politicians with influence over building projects.

Details of these political donations are now coming to light as Mitsunaga, several alleged accomplices and Kaneshiro undergo a trial on federal conspiracy charges. But the alleged straw donations themselves have not resulted in criminal charges. 

Instead, the conspiracy case has brought into focus the rarity of charges for straw donations. A Civil Beat review of media reports and public records and inquiries to city, state and federal prosecutors failed to turn up a single criminal straw donation case in the last 20 years. 

Experts say would-be prosecutions are stifled by violators’ efforts to avoid detection, a lack of resources for policing financial crimes and political reluctance to go after those who fund the campaigns of Hawaii’s most powerful politicians. 

“Hawaii really has this get-along culture,” said Randal Lee, a retired county prosecutor and state court judge. “I see nothing, I hear nothing, I say nothing.” 

But now, records introduced into the public record in the Kaneshiro-Mitsunaga case are making the issue hard to ignore. Documents, including testimony given under oath, have identified individuals who allegedly made illegal donations.

Mitsunaga’s cousin Terri Ann Otani, who worked as a secretary for the firm, allegedly made contributions in the name of family members who had “no knowledge of them,” prosecutors said. In other instances, Otani’s niece, identified in court as Jodee Haugh, knew her aunt was using her name for donations, according to prosecutors. 

“J.H. confessed in the grand jury that Otani routinely used J.H.’s name to make illegal straw contributions to multiple politicians in Hawaii, including to Kaneshiro,” the feds wrote in a court filing. A message left with Haugh was not returned.

Where that money came from to begin with is not specified in the court records. But prosecutors said the idea that Otani and other co-defendents made enough money to give thousands of dollars to politicians is implausible. Otani’s attorney Doris Lum did not respond to a request for comment. 

Court records note others who allegedly made straw donations at the behest of Mitsunaga’s company. 

Gilbert Matsumoto, a Mitsunaga firm accountant, testified he received a $6,350 check from a company executive in 2017 for the purpose of making a $6,000 political contribution at Mitsunaga’s request, according to court records. The accountant kept $350 and donated the rest to the campaign of Colleen Hanabusa. 

In apparent contradiction to his sworn testimony, Matsumoto told Civil Beat in a phone interview that the check was in fact for consulting work and that he donated to Hanabusa because he wanted to, not because he was asked to do so. 

Sam Hyun, owner of MCE International, admitted under oath that he reimbursed an employee and family members for donations to Charles Djou in 2016 and Neil Abercrombie in 2010, according to grand jury testimony cited in court records.

He testified that he had his wife, Susong Hyun, write them checks, court records show. Hyun declined to comment.

The Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission has the authority to investigate campaign finance violations, issue fines and refer cases to law enforcement.

As of last week, the agency wasn’t aware of the alleged violations identified in court records, according to commission attorney Gary Kam, but officials will now discuss whether to investigate these instances. False name contributions undermine transparency in the democratic process, he said. 

“It’s important to know where money is coming from — knowing the true source —because then the public can gauge whether or not that money is having an undue influence on legislators or people the money goes to,” Kam said. “Is this person getting contracts? Is this person getting favorable treatment as far as grants or things like that?” 

Even if the donations mentioned in court records are deemed to be violations, the five-year statute of limitations for criminal action has passed. But the commission could still issue fines to violators and seize the donation money from the candidates’ campaign coffers, if any remains. Those funds would then be reverted to the Hawaii election campaign fund. 

The commission has to meet a lower bar of proof — a preponderance of the evidence — than the criminal system’s standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. 

Lee said the commission should take action. 

“I would be rather disappointed if the commission, knowing that, doesn’t make a referral to the prosecutor’s office or the AG’s office,” Lee said. 

“If I was the Campaign Spending Commission, I would use these guys as witnesses to see who prompted them to do this, and it may go up to the chain.” 

Case 20 Years Ago Ruffled Feathers  

The last time straw donation charges made the news was in the early 2000s when Lee was a Honolulu deputy prosecutor. It was a major scandal at the time. 

A two-year criminal investigation nabbed numerous architects and engineers for donating to political campaigns over the legal limit in other people’s names. 

Executives and employees from some of the islands top firms, including SSFM and R.M. Towill, faced criminal charges and fines in the case, which made headlines for months. The case exposed how hundreds of thousands of dollars of improper donations went to candidates including Jeremy Harris, Ben Cayetano and Mufi Hannemann. 

“It was kind of egregious,” Lee said. “They would get a check from, say, the city. They would deposit it and then they would cut checks to all their relatives. And the same day the relatives got the check they wrote a check back to the campaign. So that was pretty obvious.”

Dennis Mitsunaga was investigated by a grand jury in that case. At the time, an engineer whom Mitsunaga had supposedly helped get government work pleaded no contest to illegal donation charges. The engineer told law enforcement authorities that Mitsunaga had solicited the contributions, the Honolulu Advertiser reported at the time. And Mitsunaga’s cousin, Wesley Segawa, pleaded no contest to donating over $60,000 to the Harris campaign through friends and family on Hawaii island.

Mitsunaga strongly denied the engineer’s allegation and even publicly announced that he had taken a polygraph test to prove the claim was untrue. Otani — Mitsunaga’s cousin, longtime secretary and now co-defendant — also took the test, and both of them “passed with flying colors,” Mitsunaga stated at the time. 

Ultimately, Mitsunaga was never charged. 

Prior to that probe, there were few or no prosecutions for straw donations, Lee said. 

Lee believes the case came together at the time because the right people were in the right positions. 

The head of the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission was Robert Watada, known for pursuing hard-hitting cases, and the county prosecutor was Peter Carlisle, whom Lee called a “maverick.” 

“Peter didn’t particularly care what feathers he ruffled,” Lee said. “That may have been a difference.” 

Experts Blame Lack Of Resources, Political Will

Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Steve Alm’s office acknowledged in a statement that it hasn’t pursued a false name donation case in 20 years. Spokesman Brooks Baehr said it’s up to investigating agencies like the Honolulu Police Department to refer cases to prosecutors. 

“The Department is always ready and willing to file charges in cases that are referred to it by investigating agencies when the department feels it can prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt with evidence admissible in state court,” Baehr said in an email.

David Van Acker, a supervising deputy attorney general in the AG’s Special Investigation and Prosecution Division, did not offer an explanation for why straw donor cases are so rare, but said the agency is open to pursuing them. 

“I will tell you that if and when these matters are referred to us, we will comprehensively and thoroughly investigate the matter,” he said. “We do look at campaign spending cases as very important. Elections are the bedrock of our democracy.” 

The Hawaii U.S. Attorney’s office, which prosecutes violations of federal law, was unable to point to a single prosecution it has pursued for straw donations. 

A Hawaii defense contractor, Martin Kao, pleaded guilty in 2022 to federal false name donation charges, but that case was brought by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. Kao and others used family members as conduits to steer money toward U.S. Sen. Susan Collins after the lawmaker helped security an $8 million contract for Kao’s company in her home state of Maine. 

In the two decades since the last straw donation scandal, the Campaign Spending Commission has investigated some parties for false name contributions, and it has referred some of those cases to the Hawaii Attorney General’s Office. 

But straw donations aren’t a big part of the oversight authority’s work, according to Kam, the commission’s attorney. The vast majority of violation notices are about campaign spending reports that are filed late or not at all, he said. 

In 2014, the commission made a criminal referral for donations made to then-Kauai Rep. James Tokioka’s campaign that year. The campaign had misidentified the source of a $2,000 donation, according to investigation records. But no criminal charges were filed. 

Over the past five years, there were three referrals to the AG’s office related to false name contribution cases, AG spokeswoman Toni Schwartz said in an email. Schwartz did not identify the cases, but the Campaign Spending Commission identified two of them.

One of them involved JL Capital, an Ala Moana area developer. The Campaign Spending Commission found that CEO Timothy Lee reimbursed several employees for thousands of dollars in donations to mayoral candidates Amemiya and Kym Pine in 2020.

That same election year, attorney Richard Wilson was caught donating $7,000 to his friend Kauai Councilman Mel Repozo via employees of Wilson’s law firm. Wilson reimbursed them with money from his mother. 

Civil Beat was unable to identify the third case. The AG’s office won’t say whether the cases will result in charges. 

“To preserve the integrity of our investigative process, the Department of the Attorney General does not make statements concerning the existence or status of criminal investigations,” Schwartz said. 

Other complaints haven’t made it past the commission. In 2020, during the Honolulu mayor’s race, the commission investigated a political action committee called Aloha Aina Oiaio for possible improprieties, including false name contributions. The group was publishing disparaging information, some of it false, about candidate Keith Amemiya. But the probe never resulted in a violation. 

Several factors help explain why these cases are so few and far between. 

Campaign finance cases are labor intensive, Lee said. They involve pulling campaign spending records and bank statements from donors, which can take a lot of time and resources. 

The Campaign Spending Commission has five staff members, only two of whom are investigators.

“They need more staff,” Lee said. “They’re overworked and understaffed.”

The AG’s office has only three attorney positions assigned to white collar crime, and one of those spots is vacant. The Honolulu prosecutor’s office has three such positions. 

The investigations are only tougher now in the aftermath of the case in the early 2000s, according to Lee. As a result of that case, he believes illicit donors wised up. It’s less common now for people to use checks for these transactions, he said. 

“Unfortunately, these people are getting smarter,” Lee said. “Now they’re doing cash, so it’s not traceable.” 

After that earlier scandal, the Legislature made false name donations a felony instead of a misdemeanor.

In the last decade, donors have also been able to donate unlimited amounts to some political action committees referred to as super PACs, Lee noted. That may decrease the appeal of donating in someone else’s name.  

Ali Silvert, a former federal public defender, said the professional incentives just aren’t there for prosecutors to pursue straw donation cases. 

White-collar crime investigations can take years, during which time the prosecutor isn’t getting media attention or other professional recognition, Silvert said. Besides, he said, most campaign donations will involve Democrats, who control Hawaii’s political power centers.  

“So, you’re not making headlines and you’re making people very angry — the very people who could make you a judge or make you a big law partner one day,” he said. “The political will isn’t there.”