It has long been apparent that the case against former Honolulu business owner Michael J. Miske Jr and co-defendants is grounded in a vast amount of evidence gathered in the course of four federal investigations. It is believed to be the most complex case, in terms of the sheer amount of evidence, of any case criminal ever heard in this district.

And the evidence continues to accrue.

Miske was first named in a federal indictment in mid-2019, which charged he financed an attempted major cocaine deal in California which was broken up by federal drug agents. Also named in the indictment was Michael Buntenbah, also known as Michael Malone.

The 2019 indictment remained sealed for a year, until a superseding indictment charged Miske, Malone, and nine others with being part of a racketeering conspiracy, along with 21 additional specific offenses, including the original drug charge.

Two additional defendants were later added to the case.

In an August 2022 Civil Beat story, I described the situation at that time.

There are investigative reports and witness statements from four federal investigations, the earliest from about 1998 to 2000, and continuing up through Miske’s indictment in 2019, followed by superseding indictments in 2020 and 2021.

There are phone and email records from multiple accounts turned over by the carriers. There are surveillance records, audio and video, gathered over several years, including years of 24/7 surveillance, court records show.

There are business records seized from Miske’s various businesses, and from several of his residences, along with 292,000 pages of accounting records produced by Miske’s accountant, Tricia Castro, who pleaded guilty in June 2021 to conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

The evidence in the case was again described in April 2023 when Miske’s attorneys sought, and were granted, a four-month delay in the trial after his lead trial attorney, Tom Otake, was ousted from the case.

Evidence in the case now includes more than 2 million pages of documents, data extracted from 51 digital devices, including phones, iPads, and computers, eight search warrants for contents of social media accounts, “in excess of 11,000 native files,” along with more than 200 hours of audio and visual recordings, 53.6 terabytes of pole camera data from surveillance of the exterior of the Kamaaina Termite offices on Queen Street, and 40 terabytes consisting of scanned financial records from Miske’s various businesses.

And on Jan. 31, the government agreed to release 150 “digital devices” for inspection, including DVR systems, computers, mobile devices, hard drives, thumb drives, and DVDs, containing over 200,00 video clips on the DVR systems alone.

And in a court filng on Friday, Miske’s attorneys disclosed that the evidence keeps coming.

In the past 4 months alone, the government has produced Productions 30-35, totaling 118.5 gigabytes of discovery, comprised of 312,976 files in 3,494 folders.

They do not disclose the nature of these most recent data dumps, but do suggest that at least some additional documents are expected.

Their legal memo says 60 to 100 people listed as potential witnesses in the case testified before the federal grand jury in the case, and transcripts of their statements before the grand jury are yet to be released.

Nine of Miske’s co-defendants have already pleaded guilty, leaving only four defendants to face trial—Miske, John Stancil (Miske’s half-brother), Delia Fabro-Miske (the wife of Miske’s late son, Caleb), and Jason Yokoyama (Miske’s former business partner in the M Nightclub and corporate front man).