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The 64-year-old former secretary-treasurer of the Hawaii Longshore Division who was found guilty last year of falsifying payment records and embezzlement that cost union members $95,000 was sentenced to two years in federal prison this afternoon by U.S. District Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi.
Charles Kimo Brown must also pay $96,000 fine, Kobayashi ordered. The U.S. Department of Justice had asked Kobayashi at the start of the hearing to change their previous request for a 30-month sentence to 24 months. He was found guilty Nov. 1 in a non-jury trial of two counts of falsification of financial records of a labor union and two counts of embezzlement of labor union funds.
Brown’s attorney had asked Kobayashi to sentence him to probation and fine him $10,000.
Kobayashi’s court found and concluded that in 2014 on April 11 and 18, Brown turned in wage vouchers to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 241, Hawaii Longshore Workers Division, that “contained false entries” made willfully by Brown and that he “knowingly embezzled or converted the Longshore Division’s funds” of its money, according to federal court records.