Kaua'i man enters plea agreement in Arizona

Associated Press

LIHU'E, Kaua'i — A Kaua'i community leader has pleaded guilty in Arizona to a felony theft charge.

At a hearing in Phoenix on Friday, Gary Baldwin accepted a plea agreement. In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors will drop three other theft counts and a fraud charge on which Baldwin was indicted in 1986.

Baldwin, 56, a charter member of the state's Hawai'i Tourism Authority board and former director of the Kaua'i Economic Development Board, was accused of stealing $330,000 from a Phoenix eye surgeon in the course of selling a Learjet to the surgeon's clinic.

Baldwin agreed to pay $260,000 in restitution to the eye surgeon by March 25, the date the court set for Baldwin's sentencing. He had been freed on $274,000 bail since July.

If the restitution is paid, the charges against Baldwin will be reduced to a misdemeanor and he will be placed on probation and be allowed to serve the probation in Hawai'i, said Bill Fitzgerald, spokesman for the Maricopa County attorney's office.

If restitution is not paid, the plea bargain will be withdrawn, and Maricopa County will take Baldwin to trial on the four original charges, Fitzgerald said.

Baldwin is employed by the Economic Development Alliance of Hawai'i, a federation of the economic development boards in the state's four counties. He also is a former Kaua'i representative on the Hawai'i Tourism Authority board of directors.