I missed Delia Fabro-Miske’s sentencing as I waited for two plumbers to finish up a repair at our house.

But Courthouse News Service reporter Jeremy Yurow was there and provided a valuable account.

Here’s an excerpt. You should use to link to read Yurow’s full original account.

She (Fabro-Miske) appeared for sentencing at the federal courthouse in Honolulu accompanied by her defense attorneys, who had argued that their client was under the control of her powerful father-in-law.

“She wasn’t running a multi-million dollar organization. She wasn’t the property owner,” defense attorney Marcia Morrissey told the court. “She did what he told her to do because she wasn’t equipped to — maybe the judge sees — she was a high school graduate, no training in business.”

Watson overruled the defense’s objections about her supposed involvement in the 2016 kidnapping and murder of Jonathan Fraser, in what prosecutors say was retaliation by Miske for his son’s death in a car crash.

“There were several acts by Ms. Fabro-Miske that cumulatively leave no doubt in my mind that she knew what her acts were contributing to when she did them — that is, Mr. Fraser’s kidnapping and his ultimate murder,” Watson said during Wednesday’s hearing.

Watson rejected arguments that Fabro-Miske was unaware of her role in Fraser’s disappearance, pointing to specific actions she took, including convincing Fraser and his girlfriend Ashley Wong to become roommates in an apartment paid for by Mike Miske.

“What followed was this: in the Hawaii Kai apartment that Ms. Fabro-Miske shared for a very short period of time with Mr. Fraser and Ms. Wong, Ms. Fabro disconnected the Time Warner router that was the only way for Mr. Fraser and Ms. Wong to use one of the cellular phones they possessed to communicate,” Watson said.

The judge also cited how Fabro-Miske arranged an expensive spa day for herself and Wong on the day Fraser disappeared, and then quickly evicted Wong from the apartment under false pretenses.

“While any one of these actions might be explained away with innocent and other reasons, together they paint a strong and clear picture of a conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping in aid of the very same racketeering enterprise that Ms. Fabro-Miske admitted she was a member of,” Watson said.

Delia Fabro-Miske, the daughter-in-law of the late business owner and racketeering boss Michael J. Miske, Jr., was sentenced to 84 months (7 years) in federal prison by Judge Derrick K. Watson during a hearing in Honolulu’s Federal District Court on Wednesday afternoon.

In addition, she will have to serve three years on supervised release after completion of her prison sentence, and pay $49,998 in restitution to the Social Security Administration.

Watson denied a request by Fabro-Miske’s attorney for a “non-custodial” sentence that would allow Fabro-Miske to continue raising her daughter.

Minutes of the sentencing hearing show the court adopted the factual findings of a revised Presentence Investigation Report. Although confidential, this section was disclosed in a legal memo by Fabro-Miske’s attorney opposing consideration of the “relevant acts” attributed to her by other trial witnesses.

… [A]s noted in her Sentencing Statement, the defendant contests her involvement in a significant number of the RA s asserted by cooperating defendants, including more than half of the RA s attributable for her for guideline computation purposes in this case. As a result, the defendant has minimized her conduct and has not fully accepted responsibility for her involvement in the instant offense. … Of further concern, the defendant has articulated no remorse for her participation in the kidnapping or murder of Fraser. Instead, she has put the blame entirely on Miske. The aggravating factors in this case increase the defendant’s likelihood of recidivism and risk of danger to the community.[emphasis added]

Marcia A. Morrissey, a California-based attorney representing Fabro-Miske, argued “the kidnapping and murder of Jonathan Fraser should not be considered relevant conduct, based on facts adduced at trial,” as well as federal sentencing guidelines and case law interpreting the guidelines.

After arguments were made in court, Judge Watson overruled Morrissey’s objections and permitted Fabro-Miske’s actions related to Fraser’s kidnapping and murder to be considered in his sentencing decision, according to the minutes of the hearing.

Any appeal of the sentence must be filed within 14 days of entry of judgement. It is not known whether Morrissey intends to appeal the sentence.

Fabro-Miske, now 30, was not among Mike Miske’s ten co-defendants named in the original racketeering indictment unsealed in July 2020. She was added to the case, along with Miske’s employee and business partner, Jason Yokoyama, in a superseding grand jury indictment in July 2021.

Unlike most of Mike Miske’s other co-defendants, Fabro-Miske spent only a short time in federal detention before being placed on supervised release, so she has little prior credit for time served. Judge Watson recommended she be confined in the federal correctional institution at Victorville (1st choice) or Phoenix (2nd choice), both medium security facilities. She is scheduled to turn herself in and begin her 7 year sentence by 2 p.m. on May 28.

Fabro-Miske was married to Miske’s late son, Caleb Jordan Keanu Miske, in October 2015. She was pregnant at the time. A month later, Caleb was critically injured in an automobile accident in Kaneohe. He died of complications of his injuries in March 2016 without having left the hospital.

Within a matter of months, Delia had been married, then left a widow and a single mother at 21.

Just a few months later, she assisted in the kidnapping and murder of Jonathan Fraser, Caleb’s best friend, who had also been critically injured in the crash that took Caleb’s life, but survived. Mike Miske wrongly blamed Fraser for being in the driver’s seat at the time of the accident, contrary to all available evidence and witness testimony, and the jury concluded he set in motion a murder-for-hire plot that ended with Fraser’s disappearance and death.

After Caleb’s death, Delia invited Fraser and his girlfriend to share her Hawaii Kai apartment that was being paid for by Mike Miske. On July 30, Delia took Wong to the Ko ‘Olina Resort on the other end of the island for a “spa day.” While the two women were there, Fraser disappeared and is presumed to have been kidnapped and murdered.

Fabro-Miske quickly became a central part of Miske’s scheme to hide his ownership of Kamaaina Termite and his other related businesses. State business registration records of Miske’s companies were updated to remove his name and instead claim Delia as the sole officer and director. The companies she supposedly controlled included Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control, Oahu Termite and Pest Management, Kamaaina Holdings, Hawaii Partners, Kamaaina Energy, and Makana-Pacific Construction.

However, testimony during the trial described Fabro-Miske as more of a general clerical worker in the Kamaaina Termite office, doing routine tasks and handling paperwork. Tax returns cited during the trial confirmed Miske remained the sole owner of each of the companies even after removing his name from state records.

Fabro-Miske pleaded guilty on January 12, 2024, days after jury selection began in the case, leaving Mike Miske and his half-brother, John Stancil, as the only remaining defendants. Stancil then entered a guilty plea on the first day of trial, leaving Miske to face the jury alone.

In her plea agreement, Fabro-Miske admitted she had been part of Miske’s racketeering organization and took part in racketeering activities that involved bank fraud, obstruction of justice, and wire fraud. For example, she helped to prepare fraudulent corporate documents in order to allow several people to qualify for bank loans to purchase trucks, and she also hid her actual income in order to obtain the maximum Social Security survivor benefits after Caleb Miske’s death.

More importantly, her plea agreement included a provision requiring her to “cooperate fully” with government investigators and prosecutors, including “to be available to speak with law enforcement officials and representatives of the United States Attorney’s Office at any time and to give truthful and complete answers at such meetings….”

She also agreed to testify in any grand jury or trial proceedings involving her co-defendants, if requested.

Fabro-Miske ultimately was not called as witness during Miske’s trial, and the extent of her cooperation with prosecutors remains publicly unknown.

An accountant who was kidnapped, beaten, and terrorized in October 2017 by two thugs acting on orders from the late racketeering boss Michael J. Miske, Jr., has become the first of his victims to file suit seeking monetary damages from Miske’s estate.

Attorneys representing the accountant, Seung-Ji Robert Lee, filed a complaint in state court on March 3 asking for damages for assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Lee is represented by the law office of Eric Seitz.

“Plaintiff is entitled to recover exemplary and punitive damages against Defendants for their outrageous, malicious, deliberate and oppressive acts in order to punish the wrongful conduct alleged herein and to deter such conduct in the future,” according to the state complaint.

Named as defendants are Miske, through his estate and/or personal representative; two Miske associates, Wayne Miller and Jonah Ortiz, who carried out the kidnapping; Tony Young Ho Kim, a Honolulu investor and business owner who sought Miske’s help in recovering nearly a million dollars he believed Lee had stolen; and Preston Kimoto, a manager for two Miske-owned pest control companies, who delivered Kim’s request for help recovering the money to Miske, who in turn ordered Lee’s kidnapping.

In a separate motion filed in Honolulu’s Federal District Court, Lee’s attorney asked for court approval to intervene in a civil forfeiture lawsuit in which the government is claiming the right to seize an estimated $25 million of Miske’s assets because they can be traced to Miske’s racketeering enterprise.

Miske’s personal and business assets have been encumbered by the federal government since his initial indictment and arrest in July 2020. The motion argues that Lee must be allowed to intervene in the forfeiture case “to vindicate his interests in and rights to restitution and civil damages against…Miske.”

Miske was convicted last year on 13 charges, including Lee’s assault and kidnapping, following a 6-month jury trial. Several of the charges carried mandatory minimum sentences of life in prison.

However, Miske was found dead in his cell in Honolulu’s Federal Detention Center on December 1, 2024, just weeks before he was scheduled to be sentenced. As a result, the entire criminal case, from the indictments through the trial and jury verdicts, have been vacated under the legal doctrine of abatement ab initio, as if none of it had ever taken place.

The action also vacated a pending criminal forfeiture, and the government refiled their claim in civil court seeking to seize the same set of assets.

Atlas Steel

Lee’s kidnapping and assault resulted from a business dispute between Lee and Kim over the latter’s investment of about $1 million in Atlas Steel, a local manufacturer of steel building products.

Seung-Ji Robert Lee was born in China, lived in Korea until he was 18, then lived in Brazil for six year before arriving in Hawaii in 1970. He studied at the University of Hawaii, where he received a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1980. He was licensed as a certified public accountant in August 1985, and his license remains active, according to state records.

In the late 1990s, Lee had seen potential profit in the trend toward using light gauge steel studs to frame houses and buildings instead of wood, which is vulnerable to termite damage. Lee incorporated a new company, Atlas Steel, in 2000, and began producing and selling steel products in about 2005.

By this time, two other people had invested in the company and became shareholders. One of those was Tony Young Ho Kim, who was one of Lee’s accounting clients. Kim made an initial investment of $450,000, matching Lee’s own initial investment in Atlas Steel, according to Lee’s testimony during Miske’s trial. The second outside investor died, leaving Lee and Kim as the company’s only shareholders.

Tony Kim and his wife had come to Hawaii from Korea in 1977. Starting with a cart selling puka shell jewelry in Waikiki, they eventually owned several retails stores in Waikiki, including Jewels of Hawaii in the Hyatt Regency Hotel, and Ala Moana Golf Shop in Ala Moana Center. In 2003, Kim and his wife formed KMC Broadcasting LLC, which purchased KHRA-AM, one of Hawaii’s two Korean language radio stations. Kim sold the station for a reported $790,000 in 2008.

Risky Business

When Lee started Atlas Steel, there had been only one other small firm manufacturing similar products in Hawaii. But in 2001 that company was purchased by Dietrich Industries, part of Worthington Enterprises, a national firm with deep corporate pockets.

“When they moved in they brought six new machines and built the big factory,” Lee testified. By the time Atlas began production and sales a few years later, it found tough going.

“And from the beginning we were struggling,” Lee said.

Lee, who also served as testified that he sold his house and reinvested the proceeds to strengthen Atlas’s finances, bringing his stake in the company to over $1 million.

“That was my lifetime savings,” Lee said.

When the company later applied for a $700,000 Small Business Administration loan, the agency asked Kim, who had more financial clout than Lee, to personally guarantee the loan. He agreed.

Atlas was forced to file for bankruptcy in January 2013, reporting less than $100,000 in assets, and between $1 million and $10 million in total liabilities. Although the company reorganized and emerged briefly from bankruptcy, hoping to cut costs enough to survive, it finally went out of business at the end of 2015.

The bankruptcy forced Lee’s accounting business into foreclosure, and his interest in the LLC was sold for $20,000, according to the 2021 report of the court-appointed receiver.

Debt collection

I’ve written previously about Lee’s kidnapping and assault, so this is just a brief summary of what happened.

Tony Kim lost about $970,000 of his investment when Atlas Steel closed its doors, and believed that Lee, who was president and sole officer of the company as well as a CPA, had embezzled the money. Kim told his daughter Lee had forged his signature on documents, allowing Lee to steal about a million dollars.

Kim allegedly threatened and harassed Lee for the return of his investment, but was rebuffed. Then in the summer of 2017, Kim’s daughter, Sunnie Kim, had lunch with Preston Kimoto, a manager for Miske’s Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control, and at least one other Miske company. The two had known each other previously through mutual friends, but had not been in touch for several years.

Sunnie Kim wanted to arrange termite treatment for a home, but also asked Kimoto if he knew anyone who could help her father get his money back. She agreed to pay half of whatever money was recovered, which Kimoto believed was the going rate for collecting a debt through extra-legal means.

Kimoto later testified that he simply asked Mike Miske to “talk to the guy,” apparently thinking such a direct request could persuade Lee to refund Kim’s investment. Instead, unknown to Kimoto, Miske assigned the task to an old friend and associate, Wayne Miller, who proceeded to plan and carry out Lee’s kidnapping.

Kimoto didn’t learn about the kidnapping until Miller called and asked what he should do since they had the accountant who, despite the assault and threats, insisted he didn’t have the money.

“At that point,” Kimoto testified. “I was in shock. I didn’t know what had transpired, because my understanding was that Mike was going to go and talk to him, not kidnap the person.”

Miller then drove up to Miske’s office on Queen Street, got out of his car, and greeted Miske and Kimoto, who had just returned from the gym.

“The guy better not be in the fucking trunk,” Miske told Miller.

“He’s not in the trunk,” Miller replied.

And Mike made him open the trunk to prove it.

The trunk was empty.

See:

Latest Plea Deal In Miske Case Reveals New Details About 2017 Kidnapping, Civil Beat, July 24, 2023

Trial testimony began with Count 11, a “conspiracy to commit kidnapping,” iLind.net, January 24, 2024