There’s been kind of a lull in the court case involving Mike Miske and his six remaining co-defendants, whose trial is now scheduled to begin in January.

Looking for something to write about while things are slow, I locked onto a 2014 meeting in the parking lot of a Waikiki area elementary school between Miske, his attorney, Tom Otake, and a third man, Wayne Miller. This was back before Miske was arrested and charged with a slew of violent offenses, before “Miske” became a household name.

The unusual meeting became public early this year when prosecutors said it created a legal conflict of interest on the part of Otake, who had been slated to be Miske’s lead trial attorney in the current case. Judge Derrick Watson agreed the conflict did exist, resulting in Otake’s departure from Miske’s defense team, and leaving Miske’s two remaining attorneys scrambling to split up the tasks Otake was to have handled during the trial.

The parking lot meeting was prompted by a drug deal in Los Angeles gone bad. The story goes something like this.

This has turned out to be longer and more convoluted than I anticipated, and I’m going to post it in sections. Here’s the first installment.

• • •

A failed drug deal broken up by federal and state drug enforcement agents on a lonely highway in near Los Angeles in 2014 has haunted Honolulu business owner and accused racketeering boss, Michael J. Miske, Jr., for the past nine years. The government alleges Miske funded the deal, and sent two trusted associates to California to make the cash-for-cocaine swap. They returned to Honolulu empty-handed.

The failed cocaine deal was behind the first federal charge against Miske, and returned to center stage in March when fallout from the deal resulted in Miske’s lead trial lawyer being bounced off his case.

A secret indictment

A year before Miske was arrested by a team of armed FBI agents in a pre-dawn raid at his Kailua home, he and another man had been secretly indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiring to buy more than 20 pounds of cocaine from a Mexican cartel group in Los Angeles in 2014 and smuggle it back to Hawaii for resale.

The indictment, which remained sealed and unknown to the public for a year, alleged Miske had put up $300,000 to $400,000 to finance the deal, and sent two from his inner circle on a Hawaiian Airlines flight to California in July 2014, each carrying a suitcase full of cash to be turned over to their Mexican mafia suppliers.

Miske and one of those associates, Michael Buntenbah, also known as Michael Malone, were charged in the secret indictment. Wayne Miller, a longtime friend who Miske once described as being “like my 3rd brother,” had been with Buntenbah when the drug agents broke up the deal, and was charged separately. Both men have subsequently pleaded guilty and are cooperating with prosecutors.

Conviction on the drug trafficking conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, and a 10-year minimum sentence.

This secret drug indictment was finally unsealed and publicly disclosed when Miske, Buntenbah, and nine additional co-defendants were arrested in July 2020 on charges contained in a new, 22-count superseding indictment.

The original drug conspiracy charge, which now appeared as Count 15 in the first superseding indictment, was suddenly overshadowed by new allegations that Miske controlled and directed a racketeering organization, and had engineered the kidnapping and murder-for-hire conspiracy that led to the death of 21-year old Jonathan Fraser, along with additional murder-for-hire schemes, armed robberies, assaults in aid of racketeering, chemical weapon attacks, and other offenses.

But a closer look at the 2014 deal, and its aftermath, reveals quite a bit about Miske’s organization, its reliance on family and trusted associates, and his own efforts to reap the benefits while attempting to insulate himself from legal jeopardy by keeping intermediaries between himself and the street-level action.

Miller

The idea for Miske’s planned cocaine deal in 2014 originated with Miller who, like Miske, grew up in Waimanalo, where he played Pop Warner football until he hit the weight limit for players, and where he and Miske apparently became friends.

Miller was just 30 when he arrived back in Honolulu in early 2014 after being released from federal prison where he had spent almost a decade for the 2001 armed robbery of the Windward Community Federal Credit Union Kailua branch. Miller was just 18 years old at the time, and his accomplices were juveniles.

The 2001 robbery, which took place at 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, began with Miller kicking in the glass door to the credit union, then entering and standing by with a shotgun to intimidate customers and tellers, while two others “jumped over the counters and took money from the drawers as the tellers stood in fear,” according to a Honolulu Star-Bulletin story on Miller’s guilty plea.

He was sentenced in April 2006, just weeks before his 23rd birthday. Four character reference letters were submitted to the court by family and friends prior to Miller’s sentencing.

In addition to letters from Miller’s mother and sister, additional letters were submitted by Miske, and by Edward “Denny” Freitas.

“Miller” (the nickname that I’ve called him for the past 11 years) and I have been really good friends for a long time,” Miske wrote in a letter dated March 30, 2006. “We managed to become tight friends even with the age difference.”

At the time of his sentencing, Miller was only 22. If Miske’s recollection is accurate, Miller was only about 11 years old when the two became friends.

“Miller is definitely one of those rare friends that I can always count on to be there for me if I ever needed anything,” Miske wrote. “That’s the number one quality that I admire in Miller is his loyalty as a friend.”

“I have 2 brothers in my family, and I consider Miller like my 3rd brother,” the letter said.

Freitas, in a similar letter to the court on the same date, referred to Miller as “my good friend.” Freitas, then 38, said he had employed Miller when he operated a marble and tile business in Las Vegas, before moving back to Honolulu.

“He was an excellent worker who was very committed and was always willing to help out the crew at all times, no matter what the circumstance,” Freitas wrote.

It is unclear when Miller could have worked for Freitas in Las Vegas, or how likely it would have been for the teenager from Hawaii to become his 38-year old employer’s close friend and confidant. State court records in Hawaii show that he was living here, and getting into trouble with the law prior to and following the 2001 Kailua robbery. He was believed to have been involved in a similar armed robbery of the American Savings Bank branch in Aiea in 2003, in which one of the robbers again wielded a shotgun. Prosecutors agreed to drop charges stemming from the Aiea case in exchange for Miller’s guilty plea to the Kailua robbery.

And obstruction of justice were added to the current case against Miske in December, alleging he forged at least two character references letters that were submitted to the court when he sought release from federal detention after his arrest in 2020, suggesting at least the possibility that the earlier reference attributed to Freitas’ could have been fraudulent.

Miller was arrested in Las Vegas in June 2005 after checking into a hotel and casino along the Strip.

At the time, Freitas was married to Miske’s cousin, whose brother, Craig Ivester, had been convicted of drug trafficking and money laundering in 2000 and sentenced to a 25-year prison term.

A year prior to sending character reference letters to the court in support of Miller, Freitas and Miske filed articles of incorporation with the state’ business registration division establishing a new limited liability company, Kamaaina Plumbing Company LLC. The new company was registered at the same Queen Street address as Miske’s Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control, and other Miske-related companies. In court filings, the government says Kamaaina Plumbing was owned and controlled by Miske.

Freitas served as the company’s responsible managing employee, which meant that Kamaaina Plumbing relied on his license to comply with state licensing requirements.

Freitas appears to have parted company with Miske and Kamaaina Plumbing somewhere around 2015, business registration records show.

However, his son, Kaulana Freitas, was among those indicted along with Miske in 2020. Kaulana Freitas pleaded guilty in March 2022 to participating in Miske’s racketeering conspiracy, and using a chemical weapon in a 2017 attack on a Honolulu nightclub that competed with a nearby nightclub linked to Miske. Freitas is current free on bond pending sentencing, and is cooperating with prosecutors.

Public records indicate Miller’s mother is a 2nd cousin of Norman Lani Akau III, one of Miske’s original 10 co-defendants. Akau pleaded guilty in June 2021 as part of a plea deal with prosecutors. He admitted to have been part of Miske’s racketeering organization, and described a number of crimes he had taken part in. Prosecutors, in exchange, dropped several charges and agreed not to charge him with any of the additional crimes he had disclosed.

End Part 1. Stay tuned.