The former wastewater systems executive who helped convict two former state lawmakers Opens in a new tab for taking bribes after he was caught bribing Maui County officials in exchange for government contracts died in federal prison Saturday following a fight with cancer.
Milton J. Choy Opens in a new tab, 61, was preparing to ask the U.S. Department of Justice for a compassionate release from the 41-month sentence he received in August but died Saturday in a federal prison hospital in North Carolina, his attorney, Michael Green, confirmed with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
“I never got to say goodbye,” wrote Milton’s daughter, Lacie Choy, on her Instagram account. “Now I have to miss you longer than I’ve known you. Thank you for giving us the world. I will spend a lifetime loving you Dad.”
Green told the Star-Advertiser in an interview that Choy agreed to plead guilty in August 2022 to bribery of a federally funded program and that “it’s not like dealing dope or shooting someone or threatening someone’s life.”
“And he took responsibility immediately. He was looking forward to finishing his sentence and coming back to his family, and it never happened,” said Green. “He was truly one of the most remorseful clients that I’ve represented. He took responsibility for a year before he hired me. You couldn’t help but get a lump in your throat, how much he missed them (his wife and children), loved them and never had a chance to say goodbye. It’s tough stuff.”
Choy donated to dozens of lawmakers since 2014,
including two governors, three mayors, Council members in each county, and the chairmen of the money committees in the state House and Senate.
Choy, three other family members and two business managers of wastewater
and industrial equipment companies, H2O Process Systems LLC and Fluid Technologies, owned by Choy, have donated $268,046 to candidates for Hawaii office since 2014.
Most of that money was redirected by the elected officials who received the donations to the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission.
Choy’s businesses were registered in Hawaii as a foreign limited-liability company and a firm that buys, manufactures, distributes and sells wastewater treatment and equipment
products.
Choy attracted the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice by planning and executing a six-year bribery scheme by paying Stewart Olani Stant, former director of the Maui County Department of Environmental
Management, over
$2 million.
In exchange, Stant guided about $19.3 million in contracts to Choy’s wastewater company. Stant also entered a guilty plea in September 2022, and in February was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. Stant was ordered to pay a $1.9 million judgment forfeiture for his honest-services wire fraud conviction.
Wilfredo Savella, who also worked with the county’s Department of Environmental Management, was sentenced to 16 months in prison for corrupt solicitation and acceptance of bribes and was ordered to forfeit about $41,000.
The maximum penalty for the bribery charge is up to 10 years in prison, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson said at the time Choy was sentenced in August that Choy was worthy of a reduced sentence because of his “extraordinary cooperation” with prosecutors, which led to the arrests and convictions in one of the largest public corruption
investigation in Hawaii
history.
Sorenson recommended a 36-month sentence for Choy’s cooperation. Choy was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release in August.
“Mr. Choy did quite a bit of work on behalf of the federal government in the context of our public corruption investigations,” Sorenson said in August. “The court … recognized all of Choy’s cooperation.”
Choy had to forfeit $4 million in profits from the bribery scheme.
From 2014 to 2021, Choy also bribed former state Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English and former state Rep. Ty J.K. Cullen with thousands of dollars in cash and casino chips in exchange for introducing legislation that would benefit his company and killing bills that would hurt his bottom line.
English was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison, and Cullen was sentenced to two years, both for honest-services wire fraud.
They were fined $100,000 and $25,000, respectively.
During the period of time when the pair of former state lawmakers were bribed by Choy, English was Democratic majority leader, vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Technology and a member of the Senate Committees on Ways and Means and
Transportation.
Cullen was chair of the state House Committee on Finance and also served on the Pandemic and Disaster Preparedness Committee and the Government Reform Committee.
