Hawaii Democrat Politicians Finally Busted For Treating COVID Cash Like Personal Piggy Bank

Sylvia Luke

UPDATE: Gov. Green Urges Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke To Quit So State Can Pretend This Never Happened While Prosecutors Name Former Rep Ryan Yamane The Biggest Crook In The Bunch

A grand jury just handed down indictments against Democratic Hawaii Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, former state Rep. Ryan Yamane, local businessman Tobi Solidum and a supporting cast of Democrat characters, charging one of the state's highest ranking officials with the kind of corruption that makes regular taxpayers wonder why they bother voting at all.The charges read like a greatest hits album of political greed:

Sylvia Luke faces criminal conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery by a public servant and falsifying candidate committee reports.

Ryan Yamane faces criminal conspiracy to commit bribery and bribery.
Tobi Solidum faces conspiracy to commit bribery and three counts of bribery upon a public servant.

Ford Fuchigami faces criminal conspiracy to commit bribery, use of false statements or entries and obstruction of justice.

Leo Asunción faces falsifying candidate committee reports, use of false statements or entries and obstruction of justice.

These felony surprises arrived Friday afternoon courtesy of the Attorney General’s probe into an “influential” lawmaker who federal prosecutors claim pocketed $35,000 from a federal bribery suspect back in 2022, a mystery that has entertained Hawaii for over a year. The new charges mark yet another high note in a political scandal that already sent two of Luke’s old colleagues to prison.

The written indictment carefully avoids saying anyone actually handed over $35,000 in cash but strongly hints that Solidum, a businessman hungry as a wolf for government money to fund COVID testing, promised Luke $35,000 as the first half of a cool $70,000 total during a January 20, 2022 dinner at Morton’s Steakhouse. They also chatted about union support for her campaign. “By next week we’ll have 35, so it will be halfway to our 70,” Solidum told Luke, according to the indictment.

Ryan Yamane 

This represents a dramatic plot twist for Luke, who before becoming lieutenant governor spent more than two decades as a state representative including a decade as chair of the House Finance Committee. In that role she ruled the state budget with an iron fist and built a reputation for following every rule and making sure everyone else did too. Apparently the iron fist got a little rusty once the steaks arrived.

Yamane allegedly collected thousands from Solidum while working hard to lock down funds for those COVID testing contracts. In one text message Solidum told Yamane: “have 1500 and wanted to pick up another 1k here. Mel will leave cash in Manila for you. If we’re looking at the most culpable individual factually, we believe that is Ryan Yamane,” Deputy Attorney General David Van Acker announced in court.

Solidum also supposedly slipped money to Fuchigami including a $7,000 check on January 30, 2022 while Fuchigami worked for the Senate Ways and Means Committee. Two days later the pair plus Yamane sat down to talk emergency appropriations for the health department. Van Acker asked the court to set Luke’s bail at $100,000 given the seriousness of the claims even while admitting she was no flight risk. The judge cut it to $80,000.

Luke turned herself in Friday evening and posted bail like a true public servant. Democrat Gov. Josh Green had been pushing Attorney General Anne Lopez for weeks to finish the investigation yesterday. He also worked overtime to put distance between himself and Luke, even canceling a planned trip to Washington, D.C. in February so he would not have to leave the state under her watch.

On Friday afternoon he called for Luke, already on administrative leave, to resign. “The Lieutenant Governor needs to consider formally resigning to address this matter and so that the state of Hawaii can move forward,” he said.

Yamane had served as Green’s director of the Department of Human Services until he suddenly quit once the investigation started breathing down his neck. Solidum is a local businessman, lobbyist and longtime consultant to the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii. In that position he helped steer tens of millions of dollars in COVID testing contracts during the pandemic including a mobile test site at the Honolulu airport. Court records show his consulting business collected more than $7 million for that work which overcharged the state for tests while an entity linked to his stepdaughter Kristen Pae received a $1 million dividend.

Prosecutors asked Judge Ronald Johnson for a no bail warrant for Solidum which was granted. They claim he left the country in 2025 and now lives in the Philippines after selling off real estate and moving large amounts of money offshore.

Asunción is a former chair of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission who quit that job last year. He also served as Luke’s campaign treasurer. Fuchigami was appointed by Green in 2023 as deputy director of the Hawaii Department of Transportation airports division and currently serves as airports administrator. From 2019 into 2021 he held DOT positions that gave him power over COVID relief funds and contracts. Later he worked as budget chief for Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz on the Senate money committee.

Eye witnesses say Fuchigami and Solidum regularly attended secret fundraising parties that mixed state officials including airport staff with contractors eager for state business.

Businessman Milton Choy, his relatives and Solidum poured more than $34,000 into those events according to data gathered by the New York Times and Civil Beat. In 2015 Luke herself was among the politicians who walked away richer from similar gatherings. Friday’s charges grew from a document first made public by Civil Beat last year that detailed the alleged $35,000 deal. The document explained how Rep. Ty Cullen, Luke’s former vice chair on the House Finance Committee, cooperated with the FBI after his own bribery arrest and described a bribery suspect delivering $35,000 to an “influential” lawmaker for campaign help.

The state opened its investigation under heavy public pressure on Lopez after she first refused because the feds already had the case. She changed her mind in January. At a short press conference Friday Lopez praised her office’s Special Investigation and Prosecution Division created by the Legislature in 2022 to chase corruption, fraud, white collar crime and human trafficking. “From the outset of this investigation, I have repeated that we have a commitment to following the facts to where they lead, no matter how long it takes to get there,” Lopez said. The division “has been working tremendously hard over the last six months to get us here.” She took no questions. U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson claimed last year the $35,000 arrived in a paper bag but the indictment never mentions any bag or that amount actually changing hands.

Asked about the difference Attorney General spokeswoman Toni Schwartz replied: “The indictment has the information we can release at this time.” The 30 page indictment covers February 2020 to April 2022. It details how Solidum wrote a check to Fuchigami to sway budget decisions in 2022 and handed cash and checks to Yamane in 2020. It states Luke agreed to take the $70,000 Solidum promised “with the intent to use the power of her elected position” to fund COVID testing by the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii. Those sums from one source blow past Hawaii’s individual contribution limits.

Solidum may have planned to gather the money from other people in the classic bundling move that lets donors buy influence without breaking the letter of the law. In the same talk he mentioned a fundraiser, the usual stage for that kind of cash collection. In early 2022 Solidum was chasing more state money to keep the expensive community testing sites of the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii running. He told Cullen a couple days earlier at the Elk’s Club in Waikīkī that “he was out ‘like $11,000,000,’” according to the indictment. Solidum wanted an emergency appropriation and invited Cullen to dinner with Luke at Morton’s.

Luke was “running for LG now,” Solidum said. “All I gotta do is give her more money.” On January 20, 2022 Cullen ate dinner with Luke, Solidum and Solidum’s stepdaughter Kristen Pae in a private room at Morton’s Steakhouse in Ala Moana Shopping Center while secretly recording for the FBI.

Pae handed Luke two $5,000 checks from her and Solidum written to the campaign. Luke took the money but waited years to report the $10,000 in contributions until Civil Beat asked about them. She has insisted she never accepted $35,000 from any single person. Earlier this year Luke claimed she tried to return the money after Cullen’s arrest because she felt “uncomfortable” keeping it. She has since confessed to multiple campaign finance mistakes and the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission found even more. At that January 20 meeting Solidum told Luke $70,000 was “what we committed so we gonna follow through that commitment,” according to the indictment. He also hinted at lining up labor union support for her.

Solidum then asked Luke to lean on the state Disease Outbreak and Control Division under the health department to free up more money for the mobile testing labs. The next day Luke had Rep. Linda Ichiyama, who chaired a House committee on the pandemic response, set up a meeting about emergency appropriations. At the January 25 meeting Luke talked about sending emergency money to the health department so it could pay for more COVID testing. Later that month on January 30 Solidum wrote the $7,000 check to Fuchigami who then worked for the Senate Ways and Means Committee. They met days later to discuss the emergency appropriation.

The bill that pushed funding for the COVID testing and that Luke and other lawmakers approved was introduced by Yamane. Yamane and Solidum had been texting for a couple years already.

In a February 18, 2020 exchange Solidum said he wanted to give Yamane money that included multiple checks and cash. They met later that day near a parking spot that looks like the basement of the State Capitol. The indictment lists many other times Solidum arranged payments to Yamane including an August 2021 event hosted by Yamane. In November that year Yamane shared information with Solidum about a rival COVID company. In February 2022 Yamane sought amendments to a bill that added funds for the testing sites. They also texted on February 8, 2022 about Cullen and English being charged by the feds. “Might not be good to be seen with me,” Yamane wrote.

Prosecutors further claim Fuchigami lied when he said he never received money from Solidum.

David Van Acker i

The indictments came after a day of grand jury testimony that started Friday morning as high profile witnesses walked in with their lawyers. Cullen, free from federal prison in 2024 after 11 months on bribery charges, showed up early with attorney Birney Bervar and said nothing on the way out. Other witnesses included Tony Baldomero from the Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission, Pae with heavyweight defense attorney Tommy Otake, and Cathy Ross of the Hawaii Department of Health with attorney Eric Seitz.

Ross is a former deputy health director whose division handled procurement and contracts. As of February she still worked for the state as a human resource specialist. The health department ultimately handed millions in COVID testing contracts to the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii while the City and County of Honolulu did the same to keep the mobile labs going.

Solidum arranged those contracts. The kidney nonprofit then sold overpriced COVID tests to Hawaii residents for as much as $166 each when the national median was $62 for insured patients. Solidum has ignored every attempt by Civil Beat to reach him. Over the life of the Kidney Foundation testing program Solidum’s company GeoPolicy Development Group collected more than $7 million in consulting fees from the foundation’s for profit subcontractor Capture Diagnostics. An entity tied to Solidum also received a $1 million dividend for investing in Capture Diagnostics according to court records. Soon afterward trusts linked to his stepdaughter bought million dollar properties in Kakaʻako and Kāneʻohe. In the end Hawaii’s political class has once again reminded everyone that when public servants gather around a steak dinner the public usually ends up paying the bill. This is particularly true when the Democrats are dining on the steaks.

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