Honolulu police Sgt. Daniel Sellers said Monday in U.S. District Court that he knew he wasn’t supposed to share information he learned from his investigation of an alleged mailbox theft with then-deputy prosecutor Katherine Kealoha, but did it to help her out as a friend.

Sellers had known Kealoha since they were both in high school, and both had long careers in law enforcement.

“I thought she shared the same morals and values. I was wrong,” Sellers said.

U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright sentenced Sellers to one year of probation Monday for unauthorized disclosure of confidential information. Sellers was facing up to a year in jail for the misdemeanor crime.

Seabright also fined Sellers $2,500 and ordered him to perform 80 hours of community service.

At the time he shared the information, Sellers was a member of the Honolulu Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Unit and cross-sworn as a federal law enforcement officer. The CIU was investigating the alleged theft of the mailbox from Kealoha’s home on Kealaolu Avenue in Kahala.

Sellers’ lawyer Richard Sing told Seabright that law enforcement agencies trust each other and had been sharing confidential information for years with no breaches.

Kealoha was a deputy prosecutor at the time. Police had not forwarded the case to the city prosecutor, and even if they had, Kealoha would not have been assigned to it since she was the alleged victim.

Seabright told Sellers he should have treated Kealoha as a crime victim and not a friend.

“This was a gross, gross abuse of trust because you’re a police officer,” Seabright said.

He said he did not impose any jail time because he does not believe Sellers had a corrupt motive for sharing the information with Kealoha, just poor judgment.

Kealoha, her husband, retired Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha, and three other former CIU members are scheduled to stand trial next month on charges accusing them of scheming to stage the mailbox theft and frame a Kealoha relative for the theft and lying about what they did to federal authorities.

Sellers was charged with an unlawful search and seizure of the Kealoha relative’s home, lying about it to a federal grand jury and lying to the FBI about watching surveillance video of the alleged mailbox theft. He was never charged with being part of a scheme to stage the theft and frame the Kealoha relative. He pleaded guilty in January to the misdemeanor disclosure charge in a deal with federal prosecutors.

The information Sellers shared with Kealoha was about a car he had investigated and eliminated from involvement in the alleged theft.

The former CIU members standing trial with the Kea­lohas next month are Derek Wayne Hahn, Minh-Hung “Bobby” Nguyen and Gordon Shiraishi. Hahn, Nguyen and Sellers remain employed as officers by HPD but are on restricted duty. Shiraishi was the CIU commander at the time of the alleged mailbox theft. He retired as a major before getting charged in the case.