Craig Mukai, former manager of the Sun Village Kaua‘i elderly apartments behind Wilcox Memorial Hospital in Lihu‘e, pleaded guilty to 45 felonies Wednesday in Fifth Circuit Court. According to County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, Mukai, who plead guilty to
Craig Mukai, former manager of the Sun Village Kaua‘i elderly apartments behind Wilcox Memorial Hospital in Lihu‘e, pleaded guilty to 45 felonies Wednesday in Fifth Circuit Court.
According to County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho, Mukai, who plead guilty to 42 counts of second-degree theft and three counts of second-degree forgery, stole $50,000 worth of items from Sun Village through a bunch of different schemes.
“He lived better than all of us put together,” said Kristi Stephens, a 12- year resident of the complex, one of five residents who watched the proceedings from the front row of the courtroom. “There’s a bunch of us who really care about what he did.” Mukai, who worked at Sun Village for a little more than five years, from 1997 to 2002, wrote checks to companies that did not exist, and then asked for reimbursements, or wrote checks to cash for himself; charged all types of products, including a big-screen television and new tires, on Sun Village credit cards; and made fraudulent receipts, including buying a sapphire ring for his girlfriend and calling the purchase for “maintenance,” Iseri-Carvalho said.
Many of the purchases, Stephens said, were just for pleasure, including expensive beer and wine purchases, and taking friends out for expensive meals.
The guilty plea was part of a deal with prosecutors, who had originally charged Mukai with 80 counts, Iseri- Carvalho said.
As part of the deal, prosecutors agreed to ask for no more than 10 years when Mukai is sentenced Wednesday, Nov. 17.
Mukai, 45, was subdued as he pleaded guilty to each of the counts individually. He succinctly answered each of the questions posed by Circuit Court Judge Clifford L. Nakea, and then quickly left the court. He left so quickly his lawyer, Gilbert Kea, had to chase after him into the hall.
Meanwhile, the five Sun Village residents crowded around Iseri-Carvalho in the hall, asking her about the next step in the process, which has already taken around two years.
On Nov. 17, Nakea will make the decision on sentencing, as well as whether to accept a deferred guilty plea, giving Mukai a chance to clear his record in the future.
As for what took so long, Iseri- Carvalho said, “It took a lot of time to go through each count. There were so many different kinds of deception.
