Credit where credit is due: Jim Dooley, writing for the Hawaii Reporter, seems to have provided the only account of the initial court appearance by defendants in a Maui mortgage scam case involving highly vocal advocates of Hawaiian sovereignty.

The defendants were at the center of several organizations, known as the Hawaiiloa Foundation, Ko Hawaii Pae Aina and The Registry.

According to the indictment issued on May 26, the Hawaiiloa Foundation offered seminars on Hawaiian history and land title.

Defendants also conducted private meetings with seminar participants, during which they marketed a debt assistance rogram which they claimed could eliminate mortgage, credit card and other debt. In return for the payment of a “kokua,” or fee of approximately $1,500 to $10,000, defendants promised to teach individuals how to use “bonds” and other legal documents to pay their debts by drawing on fictitious accounts purportedly established for each individual at his or her birth.

They then created “bonds,” “bonded promissory notes” and “private money orders” which they provided their customers to pay off their debts and stopping foreclosures.

They face charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States, mail fraud, and making false or fraudulent claims.

Only two defendants, Peter and Leatrice Lehua Hoy, appeared at the June 14 hearing. They entered “not guilty” pleas and were released on $25,000 unsecured bond pending trial.

Dooley quoted Peter Hoy’s court-appointed attorney, Dana Ishibashi.

“My client and his wife lost their house because they were so convinced these people could help them,” said Ishibashi.

Leatrice Hoy was employed for a time as “in a clerical job” for the Olivers, “not knowing what they were actually doing,” said Ishibashi.

“As soon as she figured it out, she cut her ties to them,” the lawyer said.

“In fact, she gathered materials together and gave them to the FBI,” Ishibashi said.

Judge Kevin S.C. Chang ordered bench warrants issued for the arrest of the remaining defendants, John Oliver, Mahealani Ventura-Oliver, and Pilialoha Teves.

Yesterday, prosecutors filed motions to hold each of the three without bail after arrest because of a “serious risk defendant will flee,” and no conditions placed on their release “will reasonably assure defendant’s appearance as required.”

The case is reminiscent in many ways of the Perfect Title case, in which David Keanu Sai was convicted in state court in 1999 of attempted theft after claiming to have determined the title to a foreclosed home was invalid.

According to a summary in Wikipedia:

Sai co-founded a Hawaiian title company, Perfect Title, which stated that all land transactions since the overthrow of the monarchy were invalid if superseded by legitimate pre-existing claims; some clients refused to make mortgage payments and lost their property. In 1997, the offices of Perfect Title were raided, and the company was barred from filing any documents with the state Bureau of Conveyances for 5 years, effectively shutting the company down. A jury on December 1, 1999, unanimously found Sai guilty of attempted theft of title to a house (value approximately $300,000) for his role as an accessory to a man and woman who used his Perfect Title services to attempt to invalidate a foreclosure on their house. For his felony conviction, David Keanu Sai was sentenced to 5 years probation and a $200 fine on March 7, 2000. His appeal was denied by the Hawaii Supreme Court on July 20, 2004.