Former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha designated her brother’s childhood friend Christopher McKinney as a confidential informant to conceal ties both men had to an alleged drug dealer and a police officer targeted for prosecution, according to testimony Friday in U.S. District Court.
Kealoha’s brother, Dr. Rudolph B. Puana, a Hawaii island anesthesiologist and pain doctor, was accused by the Department of Justice in 2019 in a 53-count indictment of health care fraud and conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and fentanyl. Puana pleaded guilty Tuesday to a single count of being a drug addict in possession of a firearm.
Puana’s trial got underway Thursday, with federal prosecutors portraying him as a drug dealer who wrote opioid prescriptions for his friends to sell or trade to fuel their cocaine consumption, while the defense asserted he was an addict legally treating people in pain.
On Friday, McKinney, an English professor at Honolulu Community College, told Chief U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright’s court that Kealoha and Honolulu police officer Danny Sellers reviewed blueprints of Tiffany Masunaga’s apartment with her brother prior to executing a search of the residence.
McKinney described Masunaga as a friend from whom he bought cocaine. Also, McKinney said he sold her oxycodone pills that Puana had prescribed for him.
In 2015, Puana told Sellers — then a plainclothes detective with the Honolulu Police Department’s now- defunct Criminal Intelligence Unit — there were some corrupt HPD officers who he had learned about from Masunaga. Sellers, Puana and McKinney had been students at Mid-Pacific Institute, and Sellers had been Kealoha’s high school boyfriend.
Puana told Sellers that HPD officer Alan Ahn reportedly helped protect Masunaga’s drug dealing.
Narcotics and vice officers arrested Ahn and Masunaga during an Aug 13, 2015, raid on Masunaga’s home in McCully, where undercover officers had bought drugs. Among the drugs seized at the home were alprazolam, an anti-anxiety drug, as well as painkillers hydrocodone and fentanyl.
In 2019, Kealoha, who had conducted the investigation of Ahn and Masunaga, pleaded guilty to using her position to shield her brother, who she claimed prescribed her pills that she would trade for cocaine. McKinney testified that he used cocaine with Kealoha twice, once next to a Mid- Pacific Institute gymnasium, while at an event where Puana was honored. Kealoha also had a drunken driving charge against McKinney dismissed.
In response to questions from special prosecutor Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat regarding the prosecution of Ahn and Masunaga, McKinney said, “Kathy told me she would designate me a confidential informant. … It conveyed to me … nothing would happen to me.” He added, “I thought I would be protected completely, identity included. That seems like what occurred.”
Ahn was eventually sentenced to 60 days in jail for promoting drugs and is no longer a police officer.
In 2019, Sellers faced felony charges for breaking into and searching Kealoha’s uncle’s residence and lying about it to a grand jury and FBI agents during the public-corruption investigation that ended with a 13-year federal prison sentence for Katherine Kealoha and a seven-year sentence for her estranged husband, former HPD Chief Louis Kealoha. Sellers pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in exchange for his cooperation with federal prosecutors. He is a current HPD officer.
In court testimony Friday, McKinney recounted that Puana had asked McKinney to remind him to write prescriptions for him before Puana would fly to Oahu to hang out.
“He (Puana) told me how much 30-mg (milligram) pills could be sold for. He also told me how much Xanax could be sold for, hydrocodone … and he said, basically, if I could find someone who would be interested in buying it, he would prescribe it to me,” McKinney said.
In response to Wheat asking, “Did you have a legitimate medical need?” McKinney said, “A need? No. … My first reaction was surprise that this was even a thing. I said I would ask around.”
McKinney told the court that between 2013 and 2018 he and Puana were like brothers. Puana introduced him to cocaine in 2013, during a visit to Hawaii island when the two began collaborating on Puana’s coming-of-age memoir, “The Red-headed Hawaiian,” which earned them the 2014 Ka Palapala Pookela Award from the Hawaii Book Publishers Association.
McKinney testified that their literary brainstorming sessions and more than 30 years of friendship led to Puana prescribing oxycodone to McKinney for him to sell at $15 a pill.
In response to a question from Wheat about whether his testimony made him uncomfortable, McKinney said, “It is embarrassing. It’s about addiction, drug use, selling drugs. It’s … a complete embarrassment, and getting involved in this … is the biggest mistake of my life.”
Even so, McKinney said he still loved Puana like a family member, despite the friendship being destroyed. McKinney is now drug-free, according to his attorney.
Prior to McKinney’s testimony, prosecutors and defense attorneys wrapped up questioning of Puana’s ex-wife, Dr. Lynn Welch Puana.
Dressed in all black for her second day on the stand, prosecutors spent hours walking her through handwritten notes in a notebook Rudolph Puana had kept about treating McKinney and others.
Welch Puana, who wore all white Thursday and said she didn’t know the notebook existed, read aloud entries for the court that detailed treatment regimes for individuals. She told the court that it looked like she had signed a couple of the notations and that her signature appeared to be forged in other places. The majority of the handwriting was Rudolph Puana’s, she testified.
In response to defense attorney questioning about amounts of opioids prescribed by Rudolph and Lynn Puana between 2013 and 2015, Welch Puana said patients who came to them from the mainland and other doctors would come to the practice with prescriptions of up to 300 pills — almost double what Rudolph Puana would prescribe at times.
“We would have patients come from the mainland with 300 tablets,” said Welch Puana. “That was not unheard of. Our point would be to drop that 10 (percent) to 20% — any faster and they could go into withdrawals.”
