Sentencing for a former Honolulu wastewater executive at the heart of the largest public corruption investigation in Hawaii’s history has been rescheduled to August, according to federal court documents.
Milton J. Choy now is set to be sentenced at 9 a.m. Aug. 29 before Chief U.S.
District Judge Derrick K. Watson. Previously, his sentencing was to be Wednesday. The sentencing was moved due to case and schedule requirements, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson, chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Criminal Division.
Choy is central to an ongoing investigation that so far has taken down a former Maui County department head, a Maui County wastewater official and two members of the state Legislature.
Choy was founder and owner of H2O Process Systems and was caught bribing Maui County officials to award his firm millions in sole-source contracts.
Choy began cooperating and helped the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office prosecute former state Senate
Majority Leader J. Kalani
English and former state Rep. Ty J.K. Cullen Opens in a new tab.
From 2014 to 2021 Choy bribed the pair with thousands in cash, bank deposits, casino chips, gambling trips and dinners, prosecutors said.
Cullen, 42, pleaded guilty to taking $30,000 in bribes in casino chips and cash over a seven-year period and was sentenced to two years in federal prison and fined $25,000. English 55, was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison and fined $100,000 after also pleading guilty to a single count of honest-services wire fraud.
Federal prosecutors lauded Cullen’s cooperation and recommended a reduced sentence based on
information he shared with the government.
The government filed a motion for a downward departure from the U.S. Probation Office calculation that Cullen spend 37 to 46 months behind bars, with a recommendation on the low end of 37 months.
Prosecutors have not detailed Cullen’s “substantial assistance,” but have said what that generally means is that a defendant has helped with the investigation of other criminal activities and other people.
Also in the Maui bribery scheme, Stewart Olani Stant, 55, was sentenced Feb. 8 to 10 years in federal prison and ordered to pay a
$1.9 million judgment forfeiture after being convicted on a charge of honest-services wire fraud.
Stant was once director of Maui County’s Department of Environmental Management.
Between October 2012 and December 2018, Stant took bribes from Choy in the form of cash, bank deposits, casino chips, travel benefits and other gifts, totaling up to $2 million, prosecutors said.
In exchange he steered more than $19 million in sole-source contracts and purchase orders to Choy’s company.
Also in that case, Wilfredo Savella, 71, was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison followed by two months of home confinement. Savella also will serve three years of supervised release after he finishes his sentence and must forfeit $41,704.
Savella entered into a
plea agreement Dec. 5
and was sentenced after
he pleaded guilty to a single count of corrupt solicitation and acceptance of bribes
in connection with the transactions of a local government receiving federal funds after he took cash, checks, casino chips and first-class travel in excess of $40,000.
