Allenie Naeole admitted to stealing money from the now-defunct First Hawaiian Homes Credit Union on Molokai for at least 10 years when she was FHHCU’s manager. She pleaded guilty in February to conspiring
with the credit union’s only other permanent employee to steal more than $1 million between June 2008 and December 2015 and to aggravated identity theft.
“This caused the demise of a credit union on Molokai,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Perlmutter said in U.S. District Court Wednesday.
She said the amount of loss is higher but that the
FBI was not able to recover credit union records before 2008.
U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson sentenced Naeole Wednesday to five years in prison for the conspiracy, the maximum allowed under the law, plus two years for the identity theft. Naeole admitted that she forged the signature of the Bank of
Hawaii Molokai branch
manager in a letter to the
National Credit Union Administration as examiners were closing in on her.
Watson told Naeole he was not influenced by her lack of prior convictions.
“You picked a doozy of a first offense,” Watson said.
He also said he was personally offended by Naeole’s actions because like him, she is a graduate of the Kamehameha Schools, which teaches students to help, not harm, their communities.
In addition to the prison term, Watson ordered Naeole to repay the $1,055,188 she stole. About half of that is owed to the NCUA and the rest to its insurer. Naeole is solely responsible for repaying about three-fourths of the restitution. She shares the
responsibility of repaying the rest with her co-defendant, Janell Purdy.
Purdy was FHHCU’s teller and customer service representative. She’s scheduled
to get sentenced next month for helping Naeole.
Perlmutter told Watson that Naeole used the stolen money to pay off her credit card bills, to cover living expenses and to support family members. She said the FBI did not find any high-value items on which Naeole could have spent the stolen money.
Naeole’s lawyer, Richard Hoke, said Naeole also took trips with her family and he believes the rest of the stolen money went for “plate lunch” type of expenses.
Naeole told Watson she knows she committed a “horrendous” crime and hurt her community, but she loves Molokai and wants to continue living there. So she said she endures knowing that her neighbors hate her and puts up with store cashiers refusing to help her when she goes shopping.