Alfredo Cabael worked for former business owner and accused racketeering boss Michael J. Miske Jr. for about a dozen years, from 2003 to 2015. He started as a bit player, but worked his way up to become one of Miske’s trusted go-to insiders. At one time, FBI agents referred to Cabael as one of those who would do Miske’s “dirty work.”

Cabael testified for several days last month. He said that he had a drug problem as a young man, entered treatment but relapsed several times, and credited Miske with giving him an ultimatum that led to his getting off drugs. He then felt indebted to Miske.

While working for Miske’s Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control, Cabael said he did ground termite treatments, mixing and applying chemicals, without a license. It was only one of several tasks he performed without being licensed and qualified.

Cabael said Kamaaina would get advance notice when state inspectors were coming. They would conceal the unregulated jobs, and would temporarily move chemicals outdoors into open air storage, then move them back inside when regulators left.

He also testified that he instructed Kamaaina employees to sign false statements certifying they never worked overtime of more than 40 hour per week. These statements were provided to labor department investigators. The claims were not true, Cabael said, because the termite treatment employees worked seven days a week. They were paid by the company for their first 40 hours, but were paid cash every Friday for the overtime, Cabael said.

Over the years, he did other things as well. He admitted to releasing Chloropicrin, a chemical used in termite treatments, in two nightclubs that competed with Miske’s M Nightclub which later did business as Encore. Cabael said he knew the chemical was harmful, but did it “to prove myself to Mike Miske.”

He worked with Miske’s cousin, Richard MacGuyer, storing, selling, and delivering fireworks they were illegally selling on the street, or through other middlemen. Miske had purchased the fireworks in China, ostensibly for an event business operated by MacGuyer, but they were routinely syphoned off to the illegal street trade.

On at least one occasion, he drove Miske and several others to a secluded spot on Sand Island, where Miske instructed two men to assault a bar tender from Miske’s nightclub who was suspected of skimming cash from his bar.

And for two or three years, from 2012-2015, Cabael served as foreman of a construction crew working on Miske’s luxury home on Lumahai Street in Portlock. There were usually 6-9 workers per week at Lumahai, and he served as a site superintendent for 5-6 hours a day while working at Kamaaina Termite. Cabael said he made cash payments to contractors and construction workers, and kept a ledger of all payments “from day 1.”

“Every time I paid someone in cash, I wrote it in the ledger,” Cabael testified, eventually paying out over $1 million in such payments.

Cabael said the cash came from Miske on Thursday or Friday of each week. Jason Yokoyama, manager of Miske’s M Nightclub and one of Miske’s co-defendants in the racketeering case, admitted that he made weekly deliveries of cash to Miske in large brown envelopes.

“These weekly deliveries were sometimes in excess of $10,000 each,” according to Yokoyama’s written plea agreement filed in federal court at the end of 2023.

Yokoyama has not yet testified in the trial.

Cabael was also registered as the owner’s representative for the fishing vessel Rachel, which Miske bought around 2010. In August 2013, he was at the dock in Honolulu as Rachel came into port, and federal agents moved in to search the boat. HPD officers searched Cabael’s truck and seized steroids, a bag of ecstasy, a fake ID, and handgun.

Cabael said he was worried because his ledger, the record of cash payments, was also in the truck, but HPD didn’t take it.

Cabael testified he got the gun from Miske in his office. It had been registered to Miske’s cousin, Richard MacGuyer, and was reported stolen in a 2010 burglary. Prior testimony said the burglary of MacGuyer’s home had been staged to avoid turning over inventory lists from their fireworks business to investigators.

Cabael said Miske later asked him to hold onto the gun.

When Cabael told Miske about the search, and advised that his ledger hadn’t been taken, Miske summoned him to a meeting in a parking garage.

“It was the first time Mike Miske was ever mad,” Cabael said.

“You fucking dumb ass, WTF you carrying it around for? I going fucken get taken down for this,” Miske told him, according to Cabael’s testimony. Miske then tore up the ledger.

Cabael testified that after this meeting with Miske, he no longer wrote in a ledger, but typed entries in his phone, and deleted them after the payments were made.

But later, after moving to Utah, he found one of his notebooks, and later provided it to investigators.

This last remaining notebook contains handwritten notes about the Lumahai Street construction, and records of all cash payments during the period.

It was admitted into evidence in the Miske trial on March 13.

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