The Miske co-defendants who drew the longest sentences are both appealing those sentences to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Lance Bermudez, who was sentenced earlier this week to a 30-year term in federal prison, filed a notice on Friday that he intends to appeal the sentence.

Bermudez, 34, is the last of Mike Miske?s co-defendants and associates to be sentenced, bringing the criminal case to an end. His 30-year sentence was the longest meted out by Judge Derrick Watson, who presided over the long and complex case.

The Notice of Appeal was filed after Magistrate Judge Kenneth Mansfield denied attorney Myles Breiner’s motion to withdraw from the case immediately. Mansfield’s reasons for turning down Breiner’s request may simply be a matter of timing.

In a brief letter attached to the “Notice of Appeal,” Bermudez says Breiner will no longer represent him once the notice is filed. The appeal itself will be filed later, presumably by a different attorney.

Letter attached to notice of appeal

Bermudez becomes the second defendant to challenge his lengthy sentence.

John Stancil, 37, Mike Miske?s younger half-brother, received a 20-year sentence, the maximum provided on the charge of racketeering conspiracy. Stancil filed a notice of appeal last year, which did not state the basis for the appeal. Following several delays, the opening brief in his appeal is due in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in September.

The appeals of both men are constrained by the terms of their plea agreements, in which each waived their rights to appeal their convictions and sentences “in exchange for the concessions made by the prosecution….”

Their plea agreements both provide that there are only two grounds of appeal that are available.

The first exception to the waiver provides the convictions or sentences can be appealed “based on a claim of ineffective
assistance of counsel.”

Further, if the defendant?s sentence is longer than the range spelled out in federal sentencing guidelines, the defendant may appeal “the portion of his sentence greater than specified in the guideline range….”

Bermudez’s 360-month sentence exceeds the high end of the guideline range, which was 327 months, the same sentence recommended by prosecutors. Although his plea agreement permits an appeal of the time period in excess of 327 months, even if successful it would reduce his 10-year sentence to “just” 27 years and three months.

At the time of Bermudez agreed to plead guilty in a deal with prosecutors, he was represented by Honolulu attorney Berney Berver. At the time, he did not express any reservations about the quality of Berver?s legal representation. Myles Breiner only took over the case in January, long after Bermudez was convicted, and represented him until this week.

The United States government has filed a civil forfeiture action against a luxury Kahala home owned by Martin Kao, the disgraced former owner and CEO of a Hawaii-based defense contractor. I ran across the case while reviewing a list of recent federal cases filed in Hawaii, and recognized the address of the property just a block down the street from our home.

The government’s complaint filed in Honolulu’s Federal District Court on July 2 seeks authority to seize the property at 4902 Kahala Avenue, located at the intersection of Kahala Avenue and Kealaolu Avenue. Kao and his wife purchased the property in June 2020.

Kao, 52, was the Chief Executive Officer and 99% owner of Martin Defense Group, LLC, formerly Navatek LLC. The company, often referred to as MDG, specialized in designing and analyzing ship hull forms, ocean structures, underwater lifting bodies, and coupled hydrodynamic systems for the Department of Defense.

He is currently serving an 87-month sentence at the medium security federal correctional facility in Sheridan, Oregon after pleading guilty to defrauding the federal Paycheck Protection Program in a scheme that netted over $12 million; channeling total of $52,000 of illegal campaign contributions to the 2020 reelection campaign of Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, with another $150,000 going to a super pac supporting her campaign, using relatives or employees and a shell company as straw donors; and forging financial documents submitted to Bank of America in order to qualify for a mortgage loan used to buy the Kahala property.

According to the forfeiture complaint, Kao applied to Bank of America for a $3 million mortgage on March 12, 2020. To support the application, he “digitally altered” several E*Trade account statements to “falsely inflate the value of his stock portfolio.”

Between mid-March and the end of May 2020, Kao manipulated the figures on six records — shifting decimal points to multiply values by 100 or 1,000 times. For example:

• A month-end account statement reported the value of Kao’s investments was $83,880.59, which he changed to claim a value of $8,388,000.59.

• The following month’s statement similarly inflated the account value from $49,614.70 to $4,961,400.70.

• A month end statement for April 2020 falsely stated that the account value was $5,618,900.02, while the true value shown on the original statement was just $56,189.02. The same fraudulent values appeared in an earlier “real-time values” record.

• Kao falsely claimed he had paid down a margin loan on his account by $4.1 million, but in fact he had paid only $4,100, inflating the amount by 1000 times.

• Finally, Kao altered a balance report in May 2020 to show an account value of $10,533,900.70, “when, in fact, the value was only $64,339.70.”

Kao submitted each of these forged documents to Bank of America in support of his Mortgage loan application.

The bank approved the loan, which made it possible for Kao and his wife to complete their purchase on June 29, 2020.

The home, at the corner of Kealaolu Avenue and directly across from Waialae Beach Park, spans 9,351 square feet, with 5 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms on a 15,074 sq. ft. lot.

For property tax purposes, it’s currently assessed at $7.69 million — $2.89 million for the land and $4.79 million for the structure. The annual tax bill is $80,273.98, and the property is not registered as owner-occupied, according to city tax records.