A strange legal case that broke on Hawaiʻi’s shores this week had its genesis in a not-too-distant era when hunger was skyrocketing and public officials were frantically spending money to meet that need.

Dexter Kishida, a former Honolulu government employee, is charged with defrauding a respected nonprofit, the Hawaiʻi Foodbank, during the pandemic by falsely telling it that nearly $1 million in Covid-19 relief funding was available to buy and distribute food from local farmers. 

The nonprofit, which had already received similar funding through the office where Kishida worked, spent its own money to do that – a routine practice with nonprofits that provide services under government contract. But when the food bank later invoiced the city of Honolulu, it eventually found that the money Kishida promised would be there to pay for the food wasn’t.

Kishida is also accused of forging documents to make it appear the food bank would get paid. Based on court documents and statements from authorities so far, he appears not to have personally benefited financially, even as the nonprofit was left holding the bag for $800,000.

The charges against Kishida — who has a long government history of working on food systems and policy issues — have baffled observers in and out of government, those who knew him and those who didn’t. 

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Dana Shapiro, co-founder and CEO of the Hawaiʻi ʻUlu Cooperative, who worked frequently with him when he was with the state Department of Education working on projects to increase food sustainability practices and improve food delivery systems for students.

“He was really passionate about local food production, local agriculture, getting that product consumed locally,” Shapiro said. “I certainly never saw anything below board or suspicious or criminal. I was completely shocked.”

At the Department of Education, Kishida “was very progressive in his thinking and he could be creative, but he was definitely working within the system,” Shapiro said.

Kishida, 46, is currently listed as the food security and biosecurity manager at the state Department of Transportation. He is set to be arraigned on charges of theft, forgery and official misconduct Monday in Hawaiʻi’s circuit court. 

The case has also raised questions in the legal community.

“Where’s the beef?” Myles Breiner, an attorney who has represented clients accused of embezzlement, said of the theft charge, which carries the stiffest potential penalty: up to 10 years in prison. 

“I don’t see any indication that he personally benefited,” Breiner said. “There’s no self-aggrandizement. There’s no self-dealing. And certainly the people who received food and assistance, they benefited.”

Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s spokesperson Scott Humber said Thursday that city officials discovered the “discrepancy” and reported it to the Attorney General’s Office. He would not say how or when that took place or comment further on the investigation.

Desperate Times, Desperate Need

During the years in which officials say Kishida defrauded the food bank, Congress was pumping billions into state and local governments to address the economic pain wrought by the Covid-19 shutdown. Kishida was near the center of the action as a program manager in Honolulu’s Office of Economic Revitalization.

That office was created in October 2020 to help manage the sudden massive influx of money, which reached $387 million alone from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act. Congress had passed the emergency stimulus package in March 2020 to shore up a national economy staggered by the pandemic shutdown, which shuttered businesses and threw millions out of work. 

The need was desperate. Aloha State unemployment shot from 2% to 22% the month after the shutdown started and tourism cratered, before settling back to between 10% and 14% in subsequent months. Food banks were working overtime to get food onto residents’ tables.

“I would get to work at 7 a.m. and there would be families already lined up waiting for me,” said Jennine Sullivan, executive director of the Pantry By Feeding Hawaii Together, a food and nutrition assistance nonprofit in Honolulu. “It was an incredibly challenging time.”

Kishida was the Food Security and Sustainability Program Manager for the city economic revitalization office, charged with managing efforts — including funding for programs — to feed vulnerable residents. 

He was, said Shapiro of the Hawaiʻi ʻUlu Cooperative, “working very, very hard, like many others in the food system and of course, in government, to address the food insecurity crisis.”

The city office steered at least $7.5 million in CARES Act funds to food programs during the pandemic, including $2.2 million to Hawaiʻi Foodbank.

“He was working very, very hard, like many others in the food system and of course, in government, to address the food insecurity crisis.”

Dana Shapiro, CEO, Hawaiʻi ʻUlu Cooperative

It is against that backdrop that Kishida now is said to have committed the crimes that together could carry combined prison sentences of up to 20 years. 

He “persuaded” the Hawaiʻi Foodbank “to purchase and distribute approximately $800,000 worth of food for Oʻahu residents,” prosecutors said in a news release. He then “created or altered” an official purchase order “and fabricated emails to make it appear that reimbursement was being processed, despite knowing there was no authorized contract or funding for the project.”

In announcing his arrest, Attorney General Anne Lopez said: “When public officials allegedly misuse their positions and provide false information that causes significant financial harm, we have a responsibility to investigate thoroughly and pursue accountability through the criminal justice system.”

William Beggs, an associate professor of finance at the University of San Diego’s Knauss School of Business who has studied fraud in the CARES Act’s Paycheck Protection Program, said, “I have never seen a case like this.”

He likened the actions Kishida is accused of taking to those that have roiled financial markets, when so-called “rogue traders” make an administrative error that leads to financial losses then create false trading ledgers — or make other transactions — to cover up the error.

Beggs said that while smaller cases “definitely happen” the only ones prosecuted that sprang to mind involved losses of a billion or more dollars. 

Based on the facts known so far in the Kishida case, he said, “it seems more like that to me, as opposed to just a straight up falsification of a loan application. It just seems to me almost like there was like a lack of internal controls here: Making sure that the funds were actually available or were qualified for whatever the purpose was.”

Urgent Spending Deadlines Loomed

Just as the influx of money was enormous, the use-it-or-lose-it deadlines attached were urgent: Congress initially said that March that it needed to be spent by that December or returned, then later extended the deadline a year, to December 2021.

The Attorney General’s Office alleged in its press release that Kishida told the food bank the money was available and carried out the forgeries of purchase orders and emails between December 2021 and August 2023. The Attorney General’s Office declined to comment further on the case.

Kishida left the Office of Economic Revitalization in July 2023 to join the state Department of  Agriculture as deputy to the chairperson, a position he held for about a year before joining the Department of Transportation.

In response to questions about the case, Foodbank president and CEO Amy Miller this week issued a statement.

“Hawaiʻi Foodbank acted in good faith to provide food assistance to Oʻahu residents during the height of the Covid pandemic,” Miller said. “Based on representations that funding was available, Hawaiʻi Foodbank purchased food from local vendors and farmers and distributed that food … to individuals and families facing food insecurity.”

She told Civil Beat that Hawaiʻi Foodbank throughout the pandemic received $5.8 million in federal Covid relief funding delivered through state and city programs. That included $800,000 in CARES Act funding through the Office of Economic Revitalization earlier in 2021, before Kishida is accused of telling the organization another $800,000 was available.

The food bank “remains engaged” with city officials about getting reimbursed, Miller said, adding that the nonprofit is nonetheless still on sound financial footing.

“While the unreimbursed cost presents challenges, Hawaiʻi Foodbank has remained financially stable and focused on its mission of serving individuals and families facing hunger,” she said.

The Office of Economic Revitalization is now at the center of a dispute between Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi and the City Council, which has questioned the office’s purpose and submitted a budget that cuts 15 of its 24 staff positions. 

Council members cited a January city auditor’s report about the office that said it had failed to meet most of its responsibilities, which have expanded beyond managing Covid relief funds into areas including tourism and workforce development. 

“Every single cent of money that came had a timeline, so you couldn’t just sit on it. You had to use it. You had to use it expeditiously.”

Honolulu Councilmember Andria Tupola

In the resulting political fight, Blangiardi this week vetoed that part of the council’s submitted budget and restored the office’s funding. The council now must decide whether to override his veto.

The audit also reported that while the office had spent $325 million in federal Covid recovery funds since it was formed, largely on rent and utility relief programs, its managers had complained that they were short of funding in multiple other areas. And by choosing to focus on building its staff, the audit said the revitalization office had “heightened risks in transparency/accountability, financial reporting accuracy, and moderate governance/control weaknesses.”

Councilmember Andria Tupola, who has supported the effort to shrink the office, on Wednesday issued a statement saying: “Recent fraud allegations involving a former OER employee further underscore the importance of strong oversight and internal controls throughout government.”

In a subsequent interview with Civil Beat, Tupola declined to comment directly on the Kishida case but said that with hundreds of millions flowing into the city, “there was a lot of pressure” to spend it appropriately and fast.

“Every single cent of money that came had a timeline, so you couldn’t just sit on it. You had to use it. You had to use it expeditiously,” Tupola said. “The agencies where a lot of the money was flowing through, that’s where the safeguards have to be very, very sure.”

In a response to the city auditor’s January report, the office’s current executive director, Amy Asselbaye, agreed that “transparency and budget reporting were insufficient.” She declined this week to comment on the Kishida case.