The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the 2007 convictions of two state officials and a contractor who participated in a multimillion dollar bid-rigging scheme at Honolulu International Airport.

The defendants — former airports maintenance supervisor Dennis Hirokawa, former airport hospitality official Richard Okada and contractor Michael Furukawa — were sentenced by U.S. District Judge David Ezra to at least five years in prison each and ordered to collectively pay up to $5 million in penalties.

A fourth man convicted in the trial, contractor Wesley Uemura, did not file an appeal.

Hirokawa, Furukawa and Okada appealed their convictions and sentences on multiple grounds, all of which were rejected this week by three judges who sit on the San Francisco-based panel.

The appellate court ruled that Ezra did not abuse his discretion when he allowed testimony in the trial from prosecution witness Kenneth Goldblatt about the financial losses to the state caused by the inflated bid-rigging fraud.

"The bid-rigging scheme appellants perpetrated was specifically designed to eli- minate yet still give the appearance of competitive bidding in order to obtain government contracts that were 'falsely and fraudulently inflated above a fair and reasonable value for the work allegedly performed,' " the appellate decision said.

The decision also rejected attacks by the defendants on the sentences handed out by Ezra.

Ezra sentenced Hirokawa to nine years in prison, Furukawa was sentenced to six years and three months behind bars and Okada received a five-year prison term.