Before the Tax Office

A reporter-disclosure chronology and public accountability letter by Ekewaka Lono.

Related open investigation: This event is one component of the ongoing 2015–2022 sequence analysis. See The Information Trail: Open Questions from 2015–2022.

The state file began with a tax-office encounter. My history did not.

Before that encounter, I had left [neighborhood redacted] after a private-information episode that disturbed me, rented a back unit in Haleʻiwa, received a room inquiry, and heard a private business message echoed at [venue redacted] shortly before a housing reference called. During the wider period that followed, I received the investigator’s “colonoscopy” warning, a death threat, and a career-destruction warning.

This is my account of that history and of the institutional decisions that followed it. My argument is that the state-facing story displaced the housing, pressure, and safety history needed to understand what I was reporting. I am identifying that omission, not asking readers to treat every name in the chronology as evidence of a common plan.

[Neighborhood Redacted]: A Private Detail Spoken Back to Me

In late 2014 or early 2015, I was living in [neighborhood redacted] on Oʻahu. I met [name redacted] through a hiking group.

[name redacted] discussed access to an Oʻahu “celebrity” tracking or stalker service and encouraged me to use 23andMe. In a later call, she described a “dream” involving pancakes and [food redacted]—foods I had recently eaten. I place the pancakes inside [venue redacted] and the [food redacted] at [venue redacted] in Kahala.

The private-club detail mattered to me. This was not simply someone observing me at an open sidewalk table. I experienced the call as a demonstration of access to information about my movements. I left the area and moved to Haleʻiwa within weeks.

I understood the call to signal access to private information. I have not identified how that information was obtained. Messages, call records, payment records, and people I told at the time could help establish the timing and what was said.

Haleʻiwa: Housing and the Reference Path

By August 2015, I was renting the back unit of a Haleʻiwa duplex. Gene and Rita Hartmann occupied the front unit. My account includes a property and family connection that also appeared in the room application’s references.

That shared environment matters because it placed the people in this history close enough to observe routines, arrivals, and housing changes. The residential street address is omitted. Lease, occupancy, and county property records can establish the relevant arrangement without publishing a private residential locator.

A prospective tenant contacted me about a room. The application material listed a person connected to the property and a manager in the surfing community as references. Her role here is the room inquiry and application. I do not accuse her of misconduct. Her name and the property reference’s name are withheld; the application and reference contacts remain the records to examine.

The application and reference records could establish what was submitted, when it arrived, and who contacted whom. Listing a reference does not establish that the applicant or the reference knew of any later threat or intended harm.

The same rule applies to public figures and relatives appearing around this history. Marriage, mentorship, family, housing, or geographic proximity does not make a person responsible for someone else’s conduct. The account assigns conduct to speakers and participants, not to everyone connected to them.

August 2015: [company redacted], [venue redacted], and a Call

Around August 10, 2015, I sent a private Facebook message to [name redacted] of [company redacted] about pro-audio equipment or reconnecting with the company. That inquiry was separate from the room application.

I then went to [venue redacted] in Haleʻiwa. A man at a nearby table, with a biker couple, said words to the effect of:

“So you’re trying to reconnect with [company redacted]? [name redacted] will call you shortly.”

About half an hour later, [name redacted] called concerning the room inquiry.

The café remark concerned a business inquiry; the later call concerned a separate housing inquiry. This account does not establish that the speaker predicted that particular call, that the people denoted by the redactions were the same person, or how the two inquiries might have been connected.

I sent a private business message, heard it echoed in public, and then received the housing-reference call.

I understood the timing as an intimidation signal. The comment did more than name a business. It joined a niche private inquiry to an imminent reference call in the local housing environment. I experienced it as a message that my private activity was visible to people around me.

The account does not identify the transmission mechanism. Social relay and technical interception are different claims. My interpretation of the signal does not establish either. The Facebook message and call records can anchor the timing; the café words are my firsthand account, given in substance. Contemporaneous witnesses or notes could independently corroborate or contradict that account.

The Tax-Office Encounter

The tax-office encounter occurred in November 2015. The booth was tiny, enclosed, and claustrophobic. I arrived sleep-deprived, frightened by the preceding private-pressure sequence, and already nervous about the tax problem. After the door closed, Young Kwak began verbally attacking and aggressively pressuring me. He demanded about seven times what I owed. I told him what I owed, and the final calculation came in just below the figure I had given him. He threatened that leaving would mean dealing with someone who “wasn’t nice.”

The later prosecution’s verbal and visual account of the encounter—Kwak’s disputed form testimony and the booth diagram—is examined in The Hypothetical Gun.

The exchange became the basis of the later state matter. Kwak’s accusation about what I said was false. My words were about exposing what was happening and telling everyone.

This letter does not claim that [name redacted], the prospective tenant, the references, the Hartmanns, or other Haleʻiwa actors planned, caused, or orchestrated the tax-office encounter. My argument is about what the official account left outside its frame: the history I brought into the building and the complaints I was trying to make.

The private chronology and the state encounter have distinct origins. Their later relationship is the subject of my accountability argument, not proof of advance coordination.

November 2015: Yuen and the “Colonoscopy” Threat

After the tax-office encounter, I met in person with James Yuen and a man identified to me as a New Jersey State Police organized-crime-task-force investigator. My current recollection places that meeting in November 2015, before the later grand-jury accusation.

Yuen was standing beside the New Jersey investigator when that man demonstrated knowledge of my childhood associates, referred to their organized-crime associations, and told me he was going to give me a “colonoscopy.”

I understood his words as a threat of invasive investigation and humiliation—a warning that the state could take apart my personal, financial, and social life. My complaint about what had happened to me had become another occasion to invoke my background against me.

The investigator’s identity and assignment, Yuen’s records, interview notes or recording, and interagency communications are the evidence needed to establish the official side of the event.

The meeting followed the tax-office encounter. It does not establish who relayed the earlier private message.

Kwak’s Account Became the State’s Account

Kwak presented his accusation to the grand jury after the Yuen/New Jersey investigator meeting in November 2015. The accusation was false. I heard it in the grand-jury recording. I was present for the underlying exchange, not in the grand-jury room, and know what I said. The recording is my source for what he told the grand jury; it has not been independently authenticated or published with this letter.

The present record does not establish what Kwak believed about the accuracy of his account. I suspect Yuen and the New Jersey investigator influenced how the accusation was later framed. That is my inference, not a conversation or instruction I independently witnessed. Witness-preparation and interview records, communications, and the testimony can test it.

After the private pressure and the tax-office encounter, Kwak’s accusation became the official account of me. It entered the criminal process. My account of what preceded it had no comparable hearing.

The Hypothetical Gun compares Kwak’s charging and trial accounts and examines the later closing argument.

Asking the Technical Community for Help

After the private-information episodes in [neighborhood redacted], the [venue redacted] message-echo, and the investigator encounter during the pending prosecution, I tried to find out how others were accessing my private communications.

I returned to a local technical community that I had helped establish. Its name and identifying venue details are withheld here. My personal background includes attending Rutgers University before moving to Hawaiʻi and helping build open-source and technical community infrastructure on Oʻahu.

I approached individuals within that technical community to ask how others could have learned private information about me. Instead of receiving technical assistance, open inquiry, or corroboration, I encountered evasiveness, dismissiveness, and stonewalling.

After those conversations, the people I approached knew I was investigating. Whether they told anyone else, and if so whom, remains an open question.

The Hartmann threat followed those inquiries, while the prosecution was pending.

The Hartmann Threat and the Counsel Report

After February 2016 and before the July 2017 trial, Gene and Rita Hartmann threatened me with death while I was under indictment and investigating for my defense. In context, I understood the warning as pressure to stop that investigation and disclosure. I reported it to Audrey L.E. Stanley¹, who interrupted and dismissed my explanation. She later relayed a tentative departure concept and made clear that it came from the prosecution, not from her.

The Threat Report preserves the words, Gene’s known information, Rita’s unresolved knowledge, the Hartmanns’ separate departure suggestion, and Stanley’s response. It examines what counsel documented and the legal questions. These events followed the inquiries described above; chronology alone does not establish who passed information to whom.

May or June 2017: The Career Warning

Shortly before trial, “Kevin” approached me outside Kahala Whole Foods. He described himself as an associate of the public figure named in the earlier threat and that figure’s spouse. He threatened career destruction if I continued talking about the Hartmann threat and related conduct.

He invoked a prominent technology investor’s name. That is name-dropping by the speaker, not evidence that the investor participated or that the speaker had the authority he projected.

Kevin threatened my career if I kept talking, shortly before I would testify at trial. No recording or business video of the encounter has been produced with this letter.

The earlier application does not become wrongful because I later received threats. The later threats do explain why the earlier timing and reference records matter to my account.

July 2017 and What Remained Afterward

I personally observed James Yuen at my criminal trial working directly with prosecutor Vincent Kanemoto in preparation of the case. That observation and Yuen’s presence during the November 2015 investigator encounter are part of my firsthand chronology. The contents of any briefing about my North Jersey background remain a records and testimony question.

In that trial, I watched Kanemoto use the mock-pistol gesture and hypothetical-gun argument described in The Hypothetical Gun. My inference is that it exploited the dangerous-associate narrative introduced during the investigator encounter. The gesture, the investigator’s words, and the inference connecting them are distinct parts of my account.

The July 2017 trial ended in a hung jury. The State did not retry the case, and I later obtained an expungement.

Later encounters at [venue redacted] continued to make the reference path significant to me. In fall 2017, I heard a woman say she had spoken to “[name redacted],” followed by “who?” In early 2018, after I had sent a private iMessage referring to “Henry,” I heard a woman nearby say, “Ok he’s listening now. Henry.” I interpreted those remarks as further signals of access to private activity. Interception is my inference, not a technical finding.

No contemporaneous press coverage of the 2015–2017 prosecution or the surrounding threat history has been identified. As a practical consequence, the threat, counsel response, and courtroom issues did not receive contemporaneous scrutiny through news coverage.

Years Later: Trying to Put the Threat Into a Police Record

Years after the original threat and the July 2017 prosecution, I again attempted to report the Hartmann threat to HPD. I identify Officer Brandt as the officer who prevented another officer from receiving that report. This occurred after 2022 and is separate from my September 20, 2022 interaction with Brandt at Breakers / North Shore Marketplace.

Brandt blocked my effort to put the threat into a police record years after the prosecution ended. Police records and the officers present could independently corroborate or contradict my account.

The records to retrieve are CAD and dispatch entries, responding-officer and unit assignments, report-intake and incident records, officer notes, any retained body-camera footage, supervisor records, and any complaint or internal-affairs material. Any surviving records could establish what was reported, who was present, what Brandt did, and whether a report was created. I am not identifying the second officer or assigning an exact date beyond after 2022.

The Public Frame Outlasted the Matter

My argument is that a state file can become the frame through which institutions see a person while the person’s unlogged safety history remains outside it. The existence of a state file does not explain what investigators said, what a witness testified to, what counsel did with a threat report, or what a prosecutor showed jurors.

That is the omission I am challenging. The earlier history is not an excuse to assign guilt across a social map. It is part of my account of the events, the responses I received, and the decisions for which I seek an explanation.

Sources, Evidence, and Response

This chronology draws on my firsthand account and the records and source materials identified below.

The original application, agency files, and grand-jury transcript have not been independently authenticated and published with this letter. No independent authentication is implied by listing their retrieval paths.

This Reporter Disclosure is chronology and source context; it does not prove the separate Wilson Loo/Petricevic courtroom allegations.

Any named person or institution may respond through the site’s Corrections Policy. Documents or responses that establish a different event, date, or communication should be included with their source identified.

My move, housing records, private message, and café encounter preceded the tax-office dispute. The investigator encounter, threats, counsel’s response, trial, and later police-reporting attempt followed it. My account of those events belongs alongside the state file.

The header image is an editorial illustration of a generic residence and record trail. It depicts no actual property, application, event, or named person. Image credit: generated editorial artwork for Oahu Underground / GTCode, October 1, 2026.

Sources and Notes