Bogus credit card led to Hawaii's largest identity theft investigation
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
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Hawai'i's biggest identity theft case started in May 2008 as a simple report of second-degree forgery.
It has since expanded to include dozens of alleged victims on O'ahu and spread from Honolulu to Manhattan Beach in Southern California.
"When I say it's the biggest (ID theft case) we've prosecuted, it's not just the number of people involved, but the number of credit card issuers who have been affected and the amount of money they have lost and the sheer number of offenses — 122 counts," said Christopher Van Marter, chief of the Honolulu prosecutor's white-collar crimes unit.
Other property crimes have resulted in life sentences on O'ahu, almost all of them for robbery, Van Marter said.
But the case against Susan Shaw — and an unrelated case of ID theft — is the first of its kind in Hawai'i in which prosecutors are pursuing life sentences with the possibility of parole.
The trial of the 35-year-old former Miss Hawaii International and a Kailua mother of three is tentatively scheduled to begin July 20 in Circuit Court.
Shaw was arrested on O'ahu once before, in 1993, for a theft at a Holiday Mart store, which is now known as Don Quijote.
She pled guilty the following January, tried unsuccessfully to change her plea to a "deferred acceptance of guilty" and was eventually convicted of theft in the second degree on March 2, 1994, according to court records.
At the time, Shaw described herself as "buyer, Tokyo Boutique."
She was sentenced to five years of probation, fined $1,797.08 and was discharged from probation on April 26, 1999, according to court records.
In the more recent criminal case, police and prosecutors have documented a far more expensive series of alleged crimes that appears to have begun in April 2008, although the investigations continue in Honolulu and Manhattan Beach.
Van Marter declined to describe how Shaw allegedly found the victims and ran the crimes.
KAILUA STAKEOUT
Court documents, however, outline an investigation that started humbly and rapidly expanded as police pursued a trail of mysterious postal delivery address changes across O'ahu and fraudulent credit cards that followed similar scenarios:
• The case began when Honolulu Police Detective John McCarthy was assigned to investigate a credit card that had been taken out in the name of Dawn M.K. Bona and had been used at seven businesses — most of them in Kailua — from April 10 to April 15, 2008.
Bona had not applied for the Visa card. And McCarthy learned that someone had also asked the Postal Service to reroute Bona's mail to a Kailua address.
McCarthy had the Kailua address under surveillance on May 8, 2008, when he saw a woman drive up, open the mailbox and flip through the mail inside.
"The female apparently did not see anything that she wanted and put all of the envelopes back into the mailbox and got back into her vehicle and drove off," according to an affidavit in the case.
The woman then sped off and blew through a stop sign before McCarthy caught up to her heading town-bound on the Pali Highway, where the woman finally stopped at a red light at Auloa Road.
McCarthy drove alongside to get a good look at the driver. A patrol officer later pulled the woman over to warn her about speeding in a residential neighborhood and for failing to stop at a stop sign.
The driver was identified as Susan E. Shaw of Kailua.
Nakanishi discovered that his mail had been going to an address in Kailua.
Two days later, on June 12, Nakanishi received a letter from Discover Card that "his" application for a credit card required additional information from him, according to the affidavit. That same day, Nakanishi discovered that another credit card had been made out in his name.
The next day, Nakanishi received a credit report that showed he had been issued five credit cards he didn't authorize: two Citibank cards, one from HSBC bank, one from Citicards and one from US Bank.
By the time Nakanishi canceled the cards, according to court records, only one had been used, for more than $1,300 — at the Willow Tree Restaurant in Kailua ($51.82), the First Hawaiian Bank ATM in Kailua ($502.25); twice at the Foodland Ala Moana ($203.03 and $303.13) and at the Foodland Kailua ($304.18).
The address of the person who had taken out the credit cards was by then familiar to Detective McCarthy.
It was right next door to where Shaw lived in a modest three-bedroom, one-bath house on Kaipiha Street in Kailua.
In an interview with The Advertiser, Nakanishi said he believes that court records underestimate the extent of the damage.
He believes that all five credit cards taken out fraudulently in his name were used for a total of more than $20,000.
Nakanishi, 32, of Kalihi, is married with a young child "and another on the way."
As a result of the ID theft, his credit rating dropped from a score of more than 800 to under 600, he said.
"You feel so helpless."
He did not lose any money directly. But Nakanishi was turned down for a personal loan and for refinancing on his house.
"It was a yearlong battle of working with the various banks and credit bureaus trying to get my credit score back to where it was," Nakanishi said. "We're still working on it. All this time has taken away from the family, too. It's time I could have spent with them. I'm just trying to get ahead and this is setting me behind financially. ... Not a good time, definitely."
Similar scenarios with more victims played out through the rest of 2008 and until April 28, 2009, when Shaw was seen buying a leather jacket at Ala Moana Center. She then drove home to Kailua, where police officers saw her make four trips from her vehicle to her house, carrying shopping bags in both hands, according to court records.
Shaw allegedly used some credit cards to pay off the bills of others, according to court records.
By the time 11 O'ahu residents and seven credit card issuers had been identified as victims, Shaw allegedly had run up charges of $160,773.76, according to court records.
ARREST AT AIRPORT
On May 7, Shaw's boyfriend of 10 years — the man who fathered two of her children — was waiting at Honolulu International Airport for her to arrive home from Los Angeles.
They had been having financial and relationship problems, the ex-boyfriend said. They slept in the same bedroom but the romance was over, he said.
(He asked that his name not be used out of concern for their two children.)
Even though Shaw had admitted she had been in a relationship with a Southern California doctor, the ex-boyfriend privately hoped they had a chance at reconciliation.
But as he waited for Shaw at 11:40 a.m. in front of the Hawaiian Airlines baggage claim area, plainclothes Honolulu police officers suddenly surrounded his truck and showed him a search warrant for their home.
"It was starting to make sense," the ex-boyfriend said.
Officers told the ex-boyfriend he was not under arrest, Van Marter said.
Shaw was taken to the Kane'ohe police substation and other officers drove the ex-boyfriend back to Kailua, where officers sifted through evidence.
The ex-boyfriend and several of Shaw's friends and family members don't remember her wearing expensive jewelry or fancy clothes. Although she and the ex-boyfriend slept in the same bedroom, Shaw used their daughter's closet to store her belongings, he said.
"Over the last few months, she bought a Kitchen Aid thingy," the ex-boyfriend said. "But I didn't see a significant amount of stuff. With all of the figures that are coming out in the papers, I'm trying to figure out where the money went."
After a grand jury indicted Shaw on May 12, Bona also estimated that some $20,000 in charges were rung up in her name.
"I was one of the first victims. ... I'm still fighting to straighten out my credit," Bona said at the time. "It's a huge humbug for me."
The following day, a person who claimed to be a friend of Shaw's called Detective Joe Aiello in Manhattan Beach to say that Shaw was living there, as well.
"I said, 'Susan who?'" Aiello remembered. "The witness told me to 'Google Susan Shaw, backslash Hawai'i' and I go, 'Oh.' "
Aiello found three more witnesses who said Shaw lived at the Manhattan Beach address. He then contacted the Honolulu prosecutor's office and offered to serve a search warrant, "based on the magnitude of the case and based on the potential that she was hiding evidence here in Manhattan Beach."
Aiello declined to identify who owned the residence but said that Shaw was renting a room.
Inside, Aiello discovered gift cards and a spiral notebook that had hand-written names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and credit cards associated with what Aiello remembered as approximately 35 people.
All of the names in the notebook belong to people living on O'ahu, except for a California resident and another from Texas, Aiello said. Van Marter said they are dependents of military members stationed on O'ahu.
Aiello also found credit profiles of several couples.
Shaw "would only represent herself as the female half," Aiello said, "but she had credit profiles of both men and women."
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