A man who federal prosecutors say had his and his sister’s trust fund money stolen by Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha
was scheduled to admit
in U.S. District Court this morning that he helped
Kealoha cover up the theft and lied when he told a grand jury that Kealoha
did not rip him off.
Federal prosecutors Wednesday charged
Ransen Taito with conspiracy to obstruct FBI and
federal grand jury investigations into the theft.
Taito’s lawyer Michael Green says Taito has agreed to cooperate with federal investigators but has not been promised anything in exchange for his guilty plea.
“He just wants to admit what he did,” he said.
Green said Taito covered up the theft and lied about it to protect his mother, who Kealoha had threatened would go to jail if anyone found out about the missing money.
The grand jury that
Taito is accused of lying to returned an indictment in October charging Kealoha and her husband, former Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha, with multiple counts of bank fraud involving the trust fund money.
The indictment also charges both Kealohas and four former members of the Honolulu Police Department’s elite Criminal Intelligence Unit with conspiracy, obstructing justice and lying to investigators in connection with an alleged frame-up of Katherine
Kealoha’s uncle, with whom Kealoha was involved in a bitter dispute over money.
So far, Kealoha has not been charged with conspiracy, obstructing justice or witness tampering in connection with Taito’s trust fund.
Taito and his sister were 12 and 10 years old in April 2004, respectively, when a state judge appointed Kealoha, who at that time was a lawyer in private practice, as guardian for the children and ordered her to deposit $167,769 into the siblings’ trust accounts.
Over the course of the next eight years, including the time she went to work for the state Department of Health and city Department of the Prosecuting Attorney, federal prosecutors say,
Kealoha drained the children’s’ trust accounts to pay for her and her husband’s personal expenses.
Within 30 days of Taito’s and his sister’s 18th birthdays, Kealoha was required to file a final accounting of their trust accounts with the state court.
Federal prosecutors say Kealoha created a fake bank statement and convinced Taito to sign a false statement in August 2010 claiming to have received all the money that had been deposited into his trust account.
Government lawyers also say after the FBI and a federal grand jury started investigating the alleged frame-up of Kealoha’s uncle, Kealoha contacted and met with Taito and his sister, told them to avoid talking to the FBI and grand jury, and that if they were called to testify for the grand jury, she would tell them what to say. The lawyers say Kealoha also convinced Taito and his sister to sign blank pieces of
paper to which Kealoha added false and misleading statements.
At the time of her indictment in October, Kealoha was a deputy city prosecutor. She has since been placed on leave without pay.
