HONOLULU — A judge sentenced a former Honolulu police lieutenant on Tuesday to three-and-a-half years in prison and a former officer to four-and-a-half years for helping a now-retired police chief and his now-estranged ex-prosecutor wife frame a relative as part of a wide-ranging conspiracy aimed at preserving the couple’s lavish lifestyle.
Derek Wayne Hahn, 48, was less culpable in the plot than former Chief Louis Kealoha, who was sentenced Monday to seven years in prison, U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright said in giving Hahn a more lenient sentence.
But former Minh-Hung “Bobby” Nguyen, 46, was more culpable than Hahn, even though he had a lower rank, Seabright said.
Kealoha’s wife, former high-ranking Honolulu prosecutor Katherine Kealoha, was the mastermind behind the scheme to frame her uncle for the theft of the couple’s home mailbox to hide fraud that included stealing from her own grandmother, Seabright said Monday in sentencing her to 13 years in prison.
Hahn was a lieutenant in an elite unit of officers hand-picked by Louis Kealoha. He was also Katherine Kealoha’s partner in a solar business.
Nguyen was married to Katherine Kealoha’s niece and had lived in the Kealohas’ pool house.
“It reached the highest levels of government,” leading to the public’s distrust in the police department, the judge said of what’s considered Hawaii’s biggest corruption case.