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When Laurel Mau started receiving postcards from her bail bond advertising agency in 2014, she didn’t know why.
The architect and interior designer, who had just been abruptly fired from engineering firm Mitsunaga & Associates Inc., didn’t realize she had been charged with four counts of second-degree larceny.
“When you got the mail, did you know there was a warrant?” Special prosecutor Michael Wheat takes the witness stand Thursday during the trial of former Honolulu prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro. Asked Mao.
“No, I didn’t,” she said.
Mao and the theft charges against her, which prosecutors say are false, are at the center of the government’s case against Jincheng and five other defendants, but the jury had not heard from Mao herself until she appeared in court Wednesday afternoon and Thursday.
Wheat’s questioning of Mau covered her time at Mitsunaga & Associates, the sexual harassment she said she experienced while working at the company, her abrupt firing in 2011, the civil lawsuit she filed against the company and the investigation by Kaneshiro’s office into Theft charges filed.
The government is trying to prove that Mitsunaga & Associates CEO Dennis Mitsunaga orchestrated a donation of nearly $50,000 to Kaneshiro’s campaign to persuade him to retaliate by filing a baseless lawsuit against Mao.
Kaneshiro and Mitsunaga, along with former Mitsunaga & Associates attorney Sheri Tanaka, secretary Terri Ann Otani, chief operating officer Aaron Fujii and president Chad Michael McDonald, were charged with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit fraud and violation of personal rights. They have all pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The defense maintains that all donations to Kaneshiro’s campaign were legal and says Mao stole funds from Mitsunaga & Associates by using the company’s name, time and resources to pursue a side business.
Defense attorneys did not have a chance to cross-examine Mao on Thursday.
sudden shooting
Mau, who started working at Mitsunaga & Associates in 1996, said she often worked 50 to 80 hours a week, even though the accounting department always told her to only write 40 hours on her timesheet.
She also described a close relationship with her former boss Mitsunaga. Wheat showed the jury a photo of a Christmas card sent to Mao by Mitsunaga, thanking her for her “dedication, loyalty and hard work” and including a kind message from his dog Miki.
But Mao said that when one of her supervisors, Steven Wong, sent her an email with an attachment containing a photo of her profile photo photoshopped onto a suggestive photo of a model. , working conditions worsened.
“I kept it and didn’t know what to do with it at first,” she said. “I guess I was just shocked.”
The harassment continued for several years, she said, some of which she detailed in a 2004 letter to Mitsunaga.
Mao said Guangyong provided her with “benefits,” including a gas card, a mobile phone and a paid parking space at the office.
However, conditions at the company did not improve, and Mao sent another letter to Mitsunaga, telling him that employee morale was low and noting that many were leaving to find jobs with higher salaries and better benefits.
She asked for a raise and received it, but Mitsunaga later sent her a letter filled with criticism of her job performance.
“I was very surprised and shocked to receive such a letter,” she said.
She wrote a reply herself and handed it to her office secretary on November 10, 2011.
When she returned from lunch that afternoon, Fujii was standing at his desk.
“(he[]=== Say, ‘Laurel, we have to let you go,'” she said. “I said, ‘Why are you letting me go?’ He didn’t say anything.”
She started packing her things and another employee, Gary Nakatsuka, captured her on video.
“I just thought, I thought, ‘I better not do anything stupid,'” she said. “That’s how I reacted.”
She said Nakatsuka and another employee began examining a box she kept under her desk that contained documents and information about small projects and side hustles, which she said she sometimes did with other Mitsunaga & Associates employees.
She said the box remained in the office after she left that day.
“I haven’t seen it since,” she said.
sideline
Wheat’s questioning turned to a dispute between Shigeru and her former employer over her eligibility for unemployment insurance and a letter she received from Tanaka on Nov. 26, 2011, saying she was under investigation for misconduct.
The letter accuses her of falsifying timesheets, using company funds to entertain clients and using the company’s name, time and resources to pursue multiple side projects, which “strictly violates company policy.”
Mao told the jury that when she received the letter, it was the first time she had heard of the allegations against her. She also said that no one ever told her that doing a side job was against company policy, and that she even did it for Mitsunaga himself and his daughter Louise.
She said she later won unemployment benefits on appeal and obtained a letter of complaint from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
In 2012, Mao said she learned of four counts of second-degree theft against her, about two years after she filed a lawsuit against the company for age and gender discrimination.
“I called my lawyer, Carl Osaki,” she said.
She said she was arrested on December 9, 2014, registered and fingerprinted.
Mai pulled up a photo taken on the day of her arrest. She was arraigned in court, pleaded not guilty and was held on $20,000 bail.
A state judge later dismissed the charges.
Wheat then began asking Mao about the long list of side businesses Guangyong United accused her of pursuing during her time at the company.
She described multiple jobs, including an interior assessment at the home of Carol and Kyle Nakamura in Manoa and planning a stone wall at her cousin’s home in Kaimukee. She said she received no payment for the work.
But defense lawyers objected to such questioning and said not all side businesses on the government’s list were cited in the three cases involving Mau and Mitsunaga & Associates – an unemployment insurance case, a civil lawsuit and a criminal case. .
Thomas Otake, a defense attorney representing Mitsunaga & Associates President Chad Michael McDonald, said it was stated to the jury that all of the side businesses at issue were allegations made by Mitsunaga & Associates in various legal proceedings.
“The court needs to instruct the jury that this is not accurate,” he said.
Before the day ended, Judge Timothy Burgess told the jury to ignore Mao’s afternoon testimony about the side business.
The trial will resume on Monday.
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