Two state officials and a contractor convicted in an airport bid rigging scandal that cost taxpayers more than $4 million were sentenced yesterday to at least five years in prison each and ordered to pay their share of a $5 million penalty.

Dennis Hirokawa, 65, a former airports maintenance supervisor whom prosecutors pointed to as the central cog of the operation, was sentenced to nine years in prison. Former contractor Michael Furukawa, 62, was sentenced to six years and three months, and former state employee Richard Okada, 66, was sentenced to five years.

Hirokawa "treated the airport contract process as if it were his own personal piggy bank," said U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra.

Ezra said he was saddened by the case, which involved hundreds of contracts being rigged through the submission of phony or inflated bids by companies for "small" airport repair jobs worth less than $25,000.

Ezra called Hirokawa "a state employee who abused his position of trust and confidence for his personal gain."

The judge also said it was "beyond my comprehension" that the scam was able to continue as long as it did.

While the case involved charges dating from 1997 to 2002, government attorneys said they had evidence it was going on as early as 1991.

"This went on for a decade," Ezra said. "It just absolutely boggles the mind to comprehend how this could have occurred."

Prosecutors said the scheme was discovered by the auditing section of the Airports Division of the state Department of Transportation.

FALSE BIDS

Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Tong said the scam would not have been possible, nor sustained, if not for Hirokawa's involvement, noting that he ordered people to issue false or inflated bids and determined who got contracts.

"During the course of the conspiracy, Dennis Hirokawa was able in his position to both grow the fraud and also conceal it from others," Tong told reporters after the sentencing hearing. "He basically controlled all the paperwork and by recruiting people loyal to him, he was able to make it appear as if there was a fair and competitive bid process when in fact the whole thing was rigged."

Hirokawa was able to control the purse strings of the contracts because all were for less than $25,000, giving him the final say on who received the contracts.

Hirokawa, Furukawa and Okada were convicted in October 2006 of conspiracy for participating in the fraudulent scheme. Furukawa and Hirokawa also were found guilty of mail fraud.

Furukawa, through his company MF Masonry, Tong said, was "by far the most culpable of all the contractors," actively recruiting other contractors and instructing them on how to participate in the scheme.

"He had an aggravating role in the conspiracy," Tong said.

Ezra said he was disappointed that Furukawa had not acknowledged his guilt in the case. "This quite simply was a case of unmitigated greed," the judge said.

OTHERS ALSO CONVICTED

During the trial, witnesses said Okada told people he needed the funds to give campaign donations to unidentified politicians. No elected officials were implicated in the case. "I would hope that that this was an isolated situation," Ezra said yesterday.

Okada was the longtime head of the airport's visitor information program.

A fourth defendant, Wesley Uemura, was sentenced on Wednesday to 3 1/2 years in prison. The contractor, 62, was the only one of the four facing charges in federal court to plead no contest.

In addition to the four men sentenced this week, six others have pleaded guilty in state Circuit Court — five of them contractors and one of them a state employee. All but one of the six have been sentenced and were ordered to pay restitution but will not need to spend time in jail.

Exactly how much each of the men is expected to pay in restitution is unclear. All are jointly and severally responsible for $4.5 million in restitution and $689,000 in investigative costs.

Senior deputy attorney general Lawrence Goya, who joined Tong in prosecuting the federal case, said every effort will be made to collect as much as possible.

"Ultimately, if none of the other people pay any of the restitution, they're going to have to stand good for the entire amount and a lot of it is going to depend on how successful collection efforts can be as far as getting restitution from these people."

Attorneys for all three men yesterday filed motions objecting to the amounts of restitution listed in the pre-sentencing report. But Ezra said he found no problem with the amounts, adding that the defendants had ample time during trial to examine the expert who calculated the amounts.

The attorneys for the three men asked that Ezra, in determining sentences, consider that their clients were generally law-abiding men who were well-liked among family and friends and had done a number of good deeds for the community.

All three men will be allowed to remain free until having to report to federal prisons or prison camps on the Mainland in January.

Since the case came to light, the state has stepped up monitoring of its contracts, Goya said.

"The procurement laws are being enforced a little more stringently than they had been before," Goya said.

"I don't think the laws were the problem. I think what happened was certain individuals found themselves in ... positions of authority and once they were there, they sort of recognized that they could taken advantage of the situation. And they did. And luckily we were able to stop that and have these people prosecuted."

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com.