Editor’s note: This article was originally published on Ian Lind’s blog, iLind.net, and is republished here with the author’s permission.

There were many significant tidbits buried in trial testimony during the first five months of the Mike Miske trial that didn’t make the news.

Here are several examples from the testimomy of Tia Paoa, who appeared in court on the morning of May 1.

Paoa is a 2011 Kamehameha School grad, making her a year older than Miske’s son, Caleb, and Caleb’s wife, Delia Fabro Miske, who graduated from high school the following year. She then attended Windward Community College and went on to UH West Oahu, but left without a degree.

She said she had been working at Victoria’s Secret as a “visual merchandizer,” when Kaulana Freitas suggested she apply for a job at Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control. Freitas’ mother is Miske’s first cousin.

Paoa said she was hired in December 2014 as an administrative assistant for Miske’s Kamaaina Solar, later known as Kamaaina Energy. She worked for Miske’s companies until late in 2019, when she moved to New York City. She is married and now works as a construction manager doing luxury interior renovations.

Initially, Paoa assisted in various tasks, invoicing, preparing permit applications, scheduling, and requesting inspections. When the office manager left, she took over the office manager’s position.

During a three-month period around the time or shortly after Jonathan Fraser’s disappearance in July 2016, her relationship with Miske developed into a romantic one.

She said she did not want to appear as a witness.

Gifts

Paoa testified that Kamaaina Solar used a “permit expeditor” to guide their permit applications through the city’s Department of Planning and Permitting.

Shs said he would give planning department staff gift cards or leave boxes of manapua to get their permits to the top of the pile.

She said Brian, the permit expeditor, would openly talk about how he was able to move their projects forward.

It was effective, she said, because he got their permits issued and closed.

While working on the application for one large project in Kona, she recalled that he spoke of giving $500 Hawaiian Airlines gift cards to several county planning employees handling the permit applications, spending between $1,000 and $2,000, using money from Kamaaina Solar.

Forgery

Paoa said that when she was working as an administrative assistant, the office manager taught her to forge the signatures of Kamaaina Solar’s responsible managing employee, or RME, which were required on permit applications and other documents. A qualified RME was necessary in order to retain the company’s license. Other witnesses said Miske’s companies had difficulty finding qualified replacements when an RME left for other employement and was no longer active on Miske’s jobs.

Kamaaina Solar’s RME left the company and was no longer supervising the work, and Paoa said he was just the RME on paper. She said they used his name and forged signature to get permits.

“I would forge his signature for all permits,” Paoa said. Although the former RME was not aware of the practice, Paoa said Miske knew.

Paoa said she forged the former RME’s signature on the $1.2 million electrical permit application for the Kona job. The RME was no longer around, but his forged signature is at the bottom of the permit application.

She went along with the forgeries because “we had to get the job done,” and that the practice was already in place when she went to work for Miske’s companies, according to her testimony.

Later, when the solar business declined due to reduced government tax credits, she became a project coordinator for Makana Pacific Development, another Miske-owned business.

Inside Information On Law Enforcement Investigations

Paoa was asked about a Kamaaina Solar employee who worked installing photovoltaic systems. Although he was not a licensed electrician, he wanted to start his own company and asked her for assistance filling out the forms.

Paoa said she was busy, but Mike Miske asked her to keep the employee happy for a specific reason. The employee had a family member who worked for the Honolulu Police Department and had access to the names of people investigators were planning to contact as witnesses in the ongoing criminal investigation of Miske and his companies. This information was being passed along to Miske.

Miske told her the information was valuable because he could “lawyer them up” before they met with invetigators. Although she was busy, Paoa said she did provide assistance as Miske requested.

The employee did register a new company in October 2016, state business registration records confirm. And the employee’s name is on the list of potential witnesses filed by the government prior to trial. Also on the potential witness list is a Honolulu police officer with the same last name, consistent with Paoa’s testimony. However, neither appeared as prosecution witnesses before the government rested its case.

Wages Paid In Cash

Paoa said one of her duties was to go out to job sites and get hours worked from a supervisor or the employees themselves. Paoa said she wrote the information on a Post-it, and left it in Miske’s office.

She testified Miske instructed her not to talk about about employees’ hours or cash payments on her cell phone, and to use encrypted apps to communicate in order to tell him when the Post-it was ready.

She was asked, “Did you think it was odd?” She said it was, and that it was probably done to avoid detection from law enforcement.

Paoa said she would assist in counting and bundling cash, and personally delivered cash to workers for about a year.

She said she delivered from $5,000 to $25,000 a week during that year.

Bank Fraud

Paoa said Miske offered to lease a Toyota Tacoma truck for her use, which would be obtained through Makana Pacific. To get a bank loan to cover the cost, the bank required an officer or owner of the company to sign as a co-borrower. To qualify for the loan, Paoa’s name had to be added as a manager of the LLC on the company’s business registration required to be filed with the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.

Paoa said she was instructed on how to fill out the paperwork listing herself as a manager, which was the only way to qualify for the Bank of Hawaii loan.

Paoa said she was not a manager of the company or a part owner of the LLC. She was a project coordinator making $15 an hour, not a salaried supervisor.

Paoa said she had supervised one person for six months, but was never considered a manager, and was only listed as a manager so that Bank of Hawaii would approve a loan.

She understaood that after the loan was approved, her name would then be removed from the business registration.

Paoa testified that she filed the paperwork with the state, sent a copy to the bank, and the financing was approved.

She said the monthly payments were made by Makana Pacific.

She was asked: “Did you know it was fraudulent?”

She answered, “Yes.”

Why did she do it, knowing it was fraud?

“I wanted the truck,” she answered.

Miske is charged with two counts of bank fraud related to two Bank of Hawaii loans used to purchase Tacoma trucks. Several other witnesses described similar fraudulent loan transactions involving filing false business registration statements with the state, as well as submitting falsified loan documents to the bank.

Erasing Evidence

Paoa testified she was in New Jersey when she learned Miske had been indicted and arrested, along with 10 co-defendants. She said she was scared, and began deleting potentially incriminating evidence.

She deleted Whatsapp and Signal, two secure messaging apps, which held intimate text exchanges, information on cash transactions, along with documents from the bank loan for the truck.

She said she deleted these files because she was scared, and knew she had done things that were wrong.

However, in 2020, she was contacted by federal investigators and hired an attorney. After reaching a proffer agreement with prosecutors, she cooperated by disclosing what she knew from her experience with Miske, with the understanding that the information being diclosed could not be used against her in any future criminal proceedings.

She said that she understood that her obligation was to tell the truth in court.