After working as a forensic accountant for three years upon earning a degree in accounting from Clemson University, Tom Simon became an FBI special agent 18 years ago at his hometown of Chicago.
"It’s something I wanted to do since I was a young child," said Simon, 43, a spokesman of the bureau in Honolulu. "I always dreamt of being an FBI agent. I thought it would be an interesting way to give back to my country."
Following the 9/11 attack, his assignment to a team of agents that dismantled several Islamic charities linked to al-Qaida and other extremist groups "was an eye-opener," Simon said, "because I had no experience in the world of terrorism or international Islamic extremism, and so being brought on to a team as the financial crimes expert on that team to cut off the road to al-Qaida was an honor and learning experience."
His assignment to Honolulu four years ago also has fit his accounting expertise.
"We don’t have a giant crime problem, or a gang problem here that rises to the level of large mainland cities," he said. "We have a massive fraud problem here, which presents opportunities to a financial crime investigator like myself. The society here is smaller and more insular, so the crimes I investigate, I believe, can have a bigger impact on the community than they would in a vast city like Chicago."
The FBI in Hawaii moved this month from two floors in the federal building on Punchbowl Street to a new four-story, 152,000 square-foot building leased from a developer on former Barbers Point Naval Air Station land at Kapolei.
QUESTION: How is Hawaii’s FBI field office different from offices on the mainland?
ANSWER: The Honolulu FBI covers a vast amount of geography throughout the Pacific and manages full-time agents on Maui, the Big Island, Guam and Saipan.
The large military footprint in Hawaii presents a target-rich environment for foreign entities who attempt to access our classified military secrets. The FBI works closely with our partners in the military and intelligence communities to ensure that our nation’s secrets remain secret.
Following the 9/11 attacks, the FBI enhanced and expanded our Joint Terrorist Task Force to include local, state and federal agencies working shoulder-to-shoulder to ensure the safety of Hawaii residents during this age of terrorist threats.
We don’t discuss specific staffing levels, but our new office in Kapolei houses about 200 full-time FBI employees, plus task force officers who collaborate on investigative matters with our agents and analysts.
Q: Are there major areas of crime that make Hawaii’s office unique?
A: In the past four years, Hawaii has seen an epidemic of investment frauds and Ponzi schemes where con men offer above-market rates of guaranteed investment returns to Hawaii residents. However, the money is never invested in any income-producing activity and is ultimately used to enrich the con man. These white-collar crimes have siphoned millions of dollars from our local economy right into the pockets of thieves.
Lately we have been seeing a drastic increase in foreclosure bailout schemes wherein con men accept advance fees from distressed homeowners with the promise that they will be able to stay in their homes. The con men then file nonsense paperwork with the courts and the recorder of deeds that ultimately do nothing to rescue the homeowners, who eventually lose their homes anyway.
Finally, our drug agents continue to fight the good fight against the trafficking of meth — also known as "ice" — in our Hawaii communities. More than any other drug I’ve seen, meth destroys lives quickly and completely.
We are working hard with our local and federal partners to curtail the importation of meth into Hawaii.
Q: What have been the most significant cases in recent years?
A: John and Julianne Dimitrion ran a Honolulu company called Mortgage Alliance that operated as a fraud factory, stealing money through mortgage and investment scams. A lot of good people lost their homes and their money because of the Dimitrions’ greed. After they pleaded guilty to their crimes, they escaped Hawaii with the help of a domestic extremist group from the U.S. mainland, and they are the focus of the largest nationwide manhunt ever coordinated out of the FBI’s Honolulu division.
Noshir Gowadia was a Hawaii resident and one of the creators of the B-2 Stealth bomber. He was arrested by the Honolulu FBI on espionage-related charges for selling classified information to China. Gowadia was later convicted in a trial and sentenced to 32 years in prison. This case was a great example of the Honolulu FBI’s commitment to keeping our national security secrets safe.
Q: What about the University of Hawaii Stevie Wonder concert scam?
A: It was a major case inasmuch that it got a lot of press attention, but a $200,00 fraud is not something we regard as a stopper case.
Q: Was that a difficult case?
A: Not particularly. It was a pretty simple case of follow the money and talk to the people who were involved and have them tell us what happened. It’s scheduled to go to trial in August, so we’ll see how it turns out.
Q: How does the new facility add to the agency’s capability?
A: Our new division office in Kapolei gives us room to work and grow that wasn’t available in the cramped Prince Kuhio Federal Building. We have 160,000 square feet with space for major-case war rooms and "clean rooms" for the analysis of evidence collected from crime scenes. We have state-of-the-art technology that allows us to communicate and share intelligence with our sister agencies. It’s the most modern building on Oahu, and it’s an honor to go to work there every day.
Q: How will your office be affected by sequestration?
A: The furloughs of FBI employees caused by sequestration will affect all of our 200 Honolulu Division employees between now and September. The resulting pay cut will affect the lives of our workforce and our families. And in an expensive state like Hawaii, that can be a source of great stress. Moreover, the idea of benching FBI agents and sending us home during these uncertain times seems wrong-headed to me. We want to work, investigate and honor our oaths of office. That’s our sole agenda. We are all hoping that Washington will devise a solution that can keep us on the streets investigating and addressing the issues that threaten Hawaii and the Pacific.
Q: Depending on what is determined to have caused the explosions at the Boston Marathon, might the Hono-lulu Marathon be subjected to increased security involving the FBI?
A: The FBI will have a seat at the table at any command post stood up by the Hono-lulu police for any major event warranting an increased level of security.
Q: The security has been achieved at stadiums, for example, but in a marathon, there is no stadium. How do you deal with that?
A: We don’t. We’re investigators; we’re not security guards. The Honolulu police handle security for their nature of events here. We’re happy to have a seat at the table, we’re happy to share intelligence, we’re happy to respond if something should happen, but the Honolulu police handle security, not us. … We’re an investigative agency, not a security agency. We’re there. If something happens, we want to be there. We want to have a seat at the table at the command post. But deciding which street corner to put what police officer or which manhole covers to weld shut, we’re not a dog in that fight; it’s not what we do.
Q: The FBI doesn’t do anything in expectation of an attack like that?
A: We continue to investigate individuals who are persons of interest in the United States all the time, who might have proclivity to do things like that. We’re investigators, though; we’re not security guards.
We have a Department of Homeland Security on the federal side that works closely with, kind of, preventive measures — but we investigate threats, we gather intelligence, we share that intelligence with our local law enforcement partners. So when it comes time for them to take a specific event and make it safer, they do that.
Take a look at the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) event we had two years ago. The FBI was working shoulder to shoulder with Honolulu police and the U.S. Secret Service, but the roles of actually making sure that it was a safe and protected event really fell on the shoulders of the U.S. Secret Service, who’s in charges of protecting the president, the Department of State’s diplomatic security service, who’s in charge of protecting all the dignitaries who were coming, and the Honolulu police, who were making sure it was a safe event, to get from Point A to Point B safely. The FBI came to the table there. We definitely have input into those events, but we’re really there to get an understanding of what happened at that event, so if something should go wrong, we’ll be prepared to investigate. That’s the FBI’s role and it has been for a hundred years.
