When digging into a complex story, I often get sidetracked by little snippets of information that beckon me to check them out, even though they may not immediately lead to anything connected to the main story I’m interested in. Sometimes, maybe most often, it just wastes my time, but it sometimes produces an interested factoid that may lead to or contribute to some other story.

This happened again when I sat through some of the final testimony of Wayne Miller, who took the stand as a witness against Mike Miske for several days last week.

At one point, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Inciong was questioning Miller, and one line of questioning was about names on the contact lists from a couple of Miller’s cell phones.

He asked about several of the names, or nicknames, on the list, asking who these people were.

One of the names was “Alii.”

Who is Alii?

“Justin,” Miler said.

“And you did drug activities with him?

Miller: Yes.

Later, Inciong introduced a text message string between Miller and Tom Otake, whose name was also on his list.

“Alen said you wanted me to call you,” Otake wrote. “I’m in court now, but later this afternoon.”

Miller responded, “OK, just call me whenever you can.”

Alen was a reference to attorney Alen Kaneshiro, a defense attorney who works (or perhaps formerly worked) out of the same office at 841 Bishop Street as several other attorneys, including Otake.

Miller described him as “one of my friends that helped me out with traffic tickets.”

“Did you have to pay him?” Inciong asked.

Miller replied that he wasn’t really charged attorneys fees. “I used to throw hin a couple of hundred bucks when I would see him,” Miller said.

Inciong asked Miller why he had been trying to reach Otake.

Miller explained he had been trying to make contact for someone else who had just been busted.

“I was reaching out to Tommy to see if he could check him out,” Miller said, adding that Alii had been arrested separately.

Alii Wilcox? And Otake ended up representing him? Yes, Miller replied to both.

So I dug around a bit, and found Justin Kaanoi Wilcox, A.K.A. Justin Alii Kaanoi, had been indicted along with eight others in September 2017 on federal charges of conspiring to distribute cocaine and methamphetimine. Wilcox/Kaanoi allegedly distributed multi-pound quanitites of both drugs through a multi-level network. He had three prior state felony drug convictions.

He retained Tom Otake to represent him in the case on November 2, 2017.

Wilcox later said his real name is Justin Kaanoi, and his name appears as Kaanoi on later documents of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Otake entered into plea negotiations with prosecutors on Kaanoi’s behalf, and a year later, on December 6, 2018, Kaanoi, signed off on a “proffer agreement” in which “Ka?anoi agreed to disclose all criminal wrongdoing committed by himself and others, with the exception of Wayne Lopaka Kahale—Ka?anoi’s childhood friend.”

Pursuant to this agreement, “Ka?anoi participated in three proffer sessions between December 2018 and November 2019.”

Kaanoi/Wilcox pleaded guilty in August 2019 as part of a plea deal. He was sentenced to 295 months in federal custody.

At the time he changed his plea to guilty, Kaanoi was 38 years old, a high-school graduate, and had completed two years of college. He said he had been self-employed in the clothing business. State business registration records show Kaanoi owned the “Armed & Dangerous” clothing brand, which he then used to launder proceeds from sales of cocaine and meth.

Kaanoi later attempted to take back his guilty plea and challenge his sentence. He filed several appeals raising objections to certain things he said Otake had done or failed to do, with similar objections about his representation by a second attorney. His appeals were subsequently denied.

However, certain information introduced in the appeal is quite interesting.

Kaanoi said that during his last proffer session with prosecutors, he was asked to divulge information about two people, Wayne Miller and Michael Miske. The documents are silent as to Kaanoi’s ties, if any, to Miske.

Kaanoi later said he had been “reluctant” to provide any information because he believed either Miske or Miller was a client of Otake.

Further, Kaanoi said Miller had retained Otake to represent him “on behalf of one Michael Mischke [sic] to know whether or not Petitioner [Kaanoi] would cooperate, and, if so, cooperate against him.”

When Miske’s name came up in the session, Otake immediately recognized a conflict of interest and withdrew from representing Kaanoi, who claimed Otake’s departure left him without proper legal counsel.

The court denied Kaanoi’s claim of “ineffective counsel,” commenting that Otake had acted properly in withdrawing from the case as soon as Miske’s name came up.

What’s interesting to me, though, is that this echoes a similar situation that became public when the government moved to disqualify both Otake and Lynn Panagakos from Miske’s defense team. The motion was denied, but in the process brought new information to light.

The government pointed to a series of messages exchanged via WhatsApp in February 2018, where Miske told Jake Smith, who became a cooperating witness, that he was “just leaving doctors office now,” accompanied by a photo of the entrance to the office suite where Otake, Kaneshiro, Lynn Panagakos, also a member of the defense team, and other attorneys all shared space.

In the text messages, Miske said the “doctors” had told him that another member of the Miske Enterprise, Jake Bermudez, was “flipping,” and said, “I seen the paperwork.”

“I wouldn’t take any calls from anybody inside if I were you guarantee it’s going to be recorded,” Miske wrote.

A document filed by Panagakos as an exhibit contains the text string.

Miske and Smith used coded conversation to discuss Lance Bermudez a.k.a. “Hanmah” and the possibiity that he would cooperate with law enforcement. Miske and Smith discussed Bermudez’ change of attorney fron “Jason” (believed to be Jason Burke) to “Mb” (believed to be Myles Breiner), the attorney who represented Lindsey Kinney.

Miske asked Smith to let Bermudez know “they only trying get him to flip on something he had nothing to do with”.

Smith asked Miske why he did’t get Scott, a corrupt ACO who assisted Miske, to pass the message to Bermudez.

“Idk he no even call me for like a month,” Miske replied.

Panagakos filed a declaration denying that she was definitely not the “doctor” referred to in the Whatsapp messages, and instead pointed the finger at Alen Kaneshiro.

It appears Miske referred associates to his favored attorneys when they were in legal trouble, and at times even paid their legal fees. And then Miske used his association with these attorneys to learn whether others were in fanger of “flipping” or not.

And the “Armed & Dangers” clothing brand? It sounds a like Michael Buntenbah’s “Defend Hawaii” clothing and accessory line. Or John Stancil’s “Leverage Honolulu” business, which had only just gotten of the ground when they were indicted and arrested in 2020.

The specific questions asked about name “Alii” on Miller’s contact lists suggests this is likely to come up again later in the trial.