Ex-Hawaii union officer gets 2 years in federal prison

May 4—The 64-year-old former secretary-treasurer of the Hawaii Longshore Division who was found guilty of falsifying payment records and embezzlement was sentenced to two years in federal prison Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi.

The 64-year-old former secretary-treasurer of the Hawaii Longshore Division who was found guilty of falsifying payment records and embezzlement was sentenced to two years in federal prison Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi.

Charles Kimo Brown also must pay a $96, 000 fine, Kobayashi ordered, a forfeiture money judgment of $1, 425.01 and a $250 special assessment. The U.S. Department of Justice had asked Kobayashi at the start of the hearing to change its previous request for a 30-month sentence down to 24 months.

Brown was found guilty Nov. 1 in a nonjury trial of two counts of falsification of financial records of a labor union and two counts of embezzlement of labor union funds. Kobayashi sentenced Brown to 12 months for each falsification charge and 24 months for each embezzlement charge, to be served concurrently.

While Brown was charged with submitting two false wage vouchers that resulted in him embezzling $1, 425.01, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, the prosecution argued during the trial, and in sentencing, that he should be held accountable for all of the false vouchers that he submitted while acting as secretary-treasurer of the union, including 384 false entries, with a total embezzlement of $96, 000 during a span of four and a half years.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Marshall H. Silverberg and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole Hudspeth prosecuted the case for the government, which declined comment on the sentencing. Brown's attorney, William A. Harrison, did not immediately reply to Honolulu Star-Advertiser requests seeking comment.

The case resulted from an investigation by the Department of Labor and the Internal Revenue Service—Criminal Investigation, according to the release.

Harrison had asked Kobayashi to sentence Brown to probation and fine him $10, 000 for his crimes, which cost union members about $96, 000. Brown asked Kobayashi to recommend that he serve his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Sheridan, Ore. He must self-report to start his sentence by 12 p.m. June 23.

On April 11 and 18, 2014, 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 he "knowingly embezzled or converted the Longshore Division's funds " of its money, according to federal court records.

From December 2009 through April 2014, Brown was an executive officer of the Hawaii Longshore Division, an autonomous division of the ILWU Local 142. In 2014 Brown was employed at McCabe Renny &Hamilton Co. Ltd. as a machine operator.

As the secretary-treasurer of the division, Brown was responsible for the union's financial matters, among other duties, and his pay came directly from division funds in lieu of wages that he would have received from his regular employer, according to the Justice Department.

The payments in the complaint were known as "lost time wages " and Brown, who worked the waterfront for 33 years as a crane operator and a machine operator, "consistently inflated his lost time hours on the weekly vouchers that he signed and submitted for payment from the Longshore Division."

The prosecution relied on the help of "two very competent case agents, who knew the vouchers, the McCabe logbook, and the McCabe pay slips in unusual detail " that allowed them to confront Brown as he lied by changing his trial testimony to try and adapt to "new conflicting evidence."

Harrison, Brown's defense attorney, wrote in a sentencing memo that Brown's "commitment to family, friends and work, as well as social and community responsibility has been outstanding."

Brown, in a letter to Kobayashi, apologized to his family, friends and former union members.

The ILWU has 14, 000 to 15, 000 workers, and the Hawaii Longshore Division has about 1, 110 workers. The ILWU provides Longshore Division Workers with office functions and access to all of its facilities, and the Longshore Division contributes 50 % of the dues it receives to the ILWU.