The Unanswered Sequence: Frame-Up, Hush, and the Open Questions from 2015–2022

Open Investigation / Working Hypotheses
This article is not an adjudication of subjective motive or a claim of an all-encompassing criminal conspiracy. It maps reported events, documented institutional relationships, information available to different actors, and hypotheses that explain the 2015–2022 sequence. The author is both the reporting investigator and the subject of the underlying events, publishing this analysis in pursuit of records, answers, and external inquiry.

Each investigation in Oahu Underground examines a different part of the history: Before the Tax Office details the pre-indictment housing and information-flow history; The Threat Report examines pretrial counsel handling of a reported lethal threat; The Hypothetical Gun analyzes closing-argument procedure; and The Silent Conspiracy audits the December 2, 2022 proceeding before Judge Wilson M.N. Loo under Rule 8.3(b).

Those investigations present the records and firsthand accounts. This article examines how those events relate: which agencies and officials were involved, who knew what and when, how the alleged frame-up worked, and what might explain the later events.

Evidence-State Classification

The table distinguishes records, firsthand accounts, interpretations, and unanswered questions:

Part I — The 2015–2017 Frame-Up Sequence

Assuming the firsthand events occurred as reported, the interpretation advanced here is that the disputed tax-office encounter became the basis for portraying Lono as armed and dangerous, while the Hartmann murder threat against him remained outside the trial record after he followed counsel’s advice not to testify. This interpretation does not require that a single group fabricated the criminal case from scratch.

1. How the Prosecution Began and the “Colonoscopy” Threat

The criminal prosecution began with an unrecorded confrontation in November 2015 inside a Department of Taxation booth between Lono and tax clerk Young Kwak. Lono reports that Kwak demanded an inflated payment under threat of adverse referral; Kwak subsequently alleged that Lono threatened him.

Before the Tax Office gives the reported order of events: after the tax-office encounter but before Kwak’s grand-jury threat accusation, Lono met in person with James Yuen and an individual introduced as a New Jersey State Police (NJSP) organized-crime-task-force investigator.

The investigator demonstrated detailed knowledge of Lono’s childhood associates who were later entangled in organized-crime prosecutions in North Jersey. During this interrogation, the investigator told Lono he was going to give him a “colonoscopy”—a direct metaphor of invasive investigation and penetration.

This encounter introduced organized-crime allegations into the tax dispute:

• The investigator portrayed Lono in terms of his childhood associates’ organized-crime connections.
• The investigator’s questions showed that he was evaluating Lono’s connections to those North Jersey associates.
• By the time Kwak delivered his threat accusation to the grand jury, Lono had already been evaluated by a law-enforcement investigator in terms of those organized-crime connections. Whether and how that characterization entered the information available to the prosecution remains an investigative question.

2. The Hartmann Threat: The Counter-Narrative Appears

Lono states that he was already under indictment, was investigating matters for his defense, and intended to testify about what he had uncovered. Lono states that Hartmann knew of the indictment and investigation. This is the defense-preparation and testimony context for the conditional lethal threat described below.

Between February 2016 and the July 2017 trial, Gene and Rita Hartmann (occupying the front unit of the Haleʻiwa duplex where Lono rented the back unit) delivered a conditional lethal threat:

“Stay away from [name withheld].”
“Or you will get whacked.”

The following day, Gene Hartmann attempted to reframe the conversation as a “murder mystery.” Lono responded directly that he would tell everyone.

Separately, Lono reports that the Hartmanns also suggested, in substance, that he go away or leave. That communication was distinct from the conditional lethal threat and preceded Stanley’s later departure proposal. It established departure as another desired outcome of the private pressure.

The threat changes the question:

• Pre-threat state frame: Lono is the aggressive actor making threats.
• Lono’s account: Lono is the criminal defendant simultaneously receiving a conditional murder threat intended to halt investigation and disclosure connected to his defense.

Had the Hartmann threat reached the courtroom or public record, it would have challenged the prosecution’s portrayal of Lono as the person making threats. It would have forced the court to ask why the Hartmanns were trying to stop the investigation and whose interests the demand served, whether Lono’s actions were reactions to intimidation, whether the threat against a defendant preparing to testify about his own defense investigation constituted witness intimidation, and whether the state was prosecuting the victim of lethal coercion.

3. Counsel’s Handling of the Threat Report: Audrey Stanley

Lono reported the Hartmann threat and its context directly to his assigned Deputy Public Defender, Audrey L.E. Stanley. Lono recalls Stanley interrupting him and dismissing the report in substance as “no big deal.”

Shortly thereafter, Stanley communicated a tentative proposal: that the pending criminal charges might be resolved if Lono agreed to leave the State of Hawaiʻi. Stanley indicated that the idea did not originate with her, and she provided no written terms or identified source.

Lono’s account raises three questions about counsel’s handling:

• A defendant reported a conditional death threat aimed at stopping investigation and disclosure connected to his defense and intended testimony.
• Counsel minimized the report, and it was not presented to the court as Lono sought. Whether it was documented, discussed, forwarded, or investigated internally is a question for the defense file.
• Stanley’s proposal also called for Lono to leave Hawaiʻi, as the Hartmanns had previously suggested.

4. Pretrial Intimidation: The Kahala Whole Foods Warning

In May or June 2017, shortly before the scheduled trial, an individual identifying himself as “Kevin” approached Lono outside Kahala Whole Foods. He described himself as an associate of both the public figure and spouse. The speaker invoked a prominent technology investor’s name and threatened career destruction if Lono continued talking about “what happened”—explicitly referencing the Hartmann threat and related events.

Kevin’s reported demand was explicit: stop talking about what happened. The approaching trial presented an imminent forum where the threat could enter a permanent public record.

5. Role Inversion via the Mock Pistol

Lono wanted to testify at the July 2017 trial. Counsel advised him not to, and he followed that advice. Consequently, the jury did not hear his firsthand account of the Hartmann threat through his testimony.

In closing argument, prosecutor Vincent Kanemoto acknowledged that there was no gun in the case. He then formed both hands into a mock pistol, pointed the two-handed gesture directly at all twelve jurors, urged them to imagine a gun, requested a conviction, and rested.

In the interpretation advanced here, the mock-pistol argument was the final step in the alleged frame-up:

• The actual threat: The jury never heard Lono’s firsthand account of the lethal threat (“you will get whacked”) against him.
• The state’s substitute: An imaginary gun was constructed by the prosecutor and visually attributed to Lono.
• The reversal: The victim of an uninvestigated murder threat was visually reframed to the jury as an armed, lethal menace.

The trial judge immediately called chambers, but no corrective instruction was given to the jury before deliberations began. The trial resulted in a hung jury, the charges were not retried, and the matter was ultimately expunged.

Part II — The Information-Network Map

This map identifies each person’s background, what they reportedly knew, and possible routes through which information could have passed. Shared professional or social connections may suggest where to look for records; they do not establish that anyone communicated. Whether anyone passed information remains unanswered.

What Each Person Knew and Their Documented Connections

Possible Connections Through Agencies and Professional Networks

Shared social networks, professional associations, and agency channels are possible routes for information movement without a common command structure. Which routes carried information about Lono is the question this investigation seeks to answer.

The relevant backgrounds differ: the 2015 investigator demonstrated detailed knowledge of Lono’s North Jersey childhood network; Loo was a Rutgers-trained former organized-crime prosecutor; Petricevic worked in the Hawaiʻi Attorney General’s office throughout 2015–2017. Their knowledge and communications warrant investigation. Whether information passed between them, what it contained, and when it passed remain questions for records requests.

Part III — Possible Explanations for Later Events (2021–2022 Onward)

The events of 2021–2022 (assault complaints, the alleged deceptive reversal of TRO service status, HPD report numbers 22-353421 and 22-365099, the December 2, 2022 Wilson Loo hearing, and the post-2022 intake obstruction by Officer Brandt) have an unresolved relationship to the 2015–2017 prosecution. Five competing hypotheses may explain them:

H1: Post-Frame-Up Hush / Containment

• Premise: Later official actors acted with awareness of the earlier irregular prosecution, threat suppression, or civil-rights exposures, and took steps to prevent records from being created that could reopen or expose the 2015–2017 history.
• Events this hypothesis would explain: Explains why Judge Loo cut off the verbal record-making attempt on December 2, 2022; why the audio was sealed; and why, in Lono’s account, Brandt prevented another officer from receiving the report of the older Hartmann threat after 2022.

H2: Finishing the Job

• Premise: Because the 2017 trial ended in a hung jury rather than a conviction or permanent removal from Hawaiʻi, later disputes were used as secondary opportunities to impose adverse legal or physical outcomes on Lono.
• Events this hypothesis would explain: The continued harassment and vehicle-threat sequence, HPD non-investigation, and the alleged deceptive reversal of service status after Shatoo told Lono that service had occurred. Brandt later represented otherwise. The allegation is deliberate deception; HPD service records and officer records can test what each officer knew and said.

H3: Inherited Framing

The existence of any formal or informal adverse institutional profile, flag, characterization, or shared reputation remains an investigative hypothesis. The following premise describes its proposed mechanism.

• Premise: Later actors possessed no specific knowledge of the Hartmann threat or the mock-pistol sequence, but inherited a generalized institutional profile characterizing Lono as a “difficult,” “threatening,” or “dangerous” individual associated with organized crime.
• Events this hypothesis would explain: Explains police dismissing or deprioritizing complaints, administrative dismissiveness, and aggressive judicial demeanor without requiring any conspiracy. Such a label could cause subsequent personnel to approach later complaints through an inherited adverse frame, without knowing how that frame originated.

H4: Independent Misconduct with Inherited Context

• Premise: The December 2, 2022 signaling event by Judge Loo was an independent act of judicial favoritism toward counsel (Petricevic) or the witness, completely unrelated to the 2015–2017 prosecution, but executed against a litigant whom the court felt could be dismissed without institutional consequence.
• Events this hypothesis would explain: Consistent with the analysis of counsel’s Rule 8.3(b) reporting duty in The Silent Conspiracy, which analyzes the Rule 8.3(b) reporting obligation independently of whether Loo’s motive had any relationship to the earlier sequence. That obligation turns on what counsel saw, understood, and knew, and on applicable confidentiality constraints.

H5: Different Motives, Similar Outcomes

• Premise: A combination of H1, H3, and H4: institutional actors acted under different, uncoordinated motives (protecting local reputations, clearing dockets, shielding colleagues, relying on biased background files) that all pointed toward the same practical outcome: silencing the complainant and sealing the record.

Part IV — The Research Agenda: Unanswered Questions

This investigation identifies specific, answerable questions and the corresponding public and private records required to test them. Negative search results carry weight only to the extent that the search is complete and relevant records were retained and accessible; an unrecovered record is not proof that communication never occurred.

1. The Deputy Attorney General Exposure Question

• Person or Agency: Bosko Petricevic.
• Documented Fact: Petricevic served as a Hawaiʻi Deputy Attorney General from June 2013 to March 2019.
• The Question: Did Petricevic, during his six-year tenure as a state DAG, receive briefings, memos, emails, or informal communications regarding the 2015–2017 prosecution of Lono, the tax-office dispute, or related law-enforcement contacts?
• Records Required: Department of the Attorney General internal correspondence, conflict logs, case-management database entries (2015–2019).
• What would weaken the hypothesis: A sufficiently complete search showing no relevant references, access, correspondence, or personnel overlap would weaken transmission through Petricevic.

2. The Wilson Loo Organized Crime Background Question

• Person or Agency: Former Judge Wilson M.N. Loo.
• Documented Fact: Loo graduated from Rutgers Law School in 1980 and served as Honolulu’s Organized Crime Prosecutor from 1980 to 1984.
• The Question: Did Loo maintain interstate or federal law-enforcement contacts from his organized-crime prosecutorial tenure? Did he or his chambers receive any informal briefings, background material, or case-file summaries regarding Lono before the December 2, 2022 hearing?
• Records Required — Historical Contacts: Loo’s 1980–1984 prosecution assignments, archived Honolulu prosecutor-office materials, task-force membership records, federal/state co-prosecution records, professional biographies, and contemporaneous organized-crime case records. Later correspondence and membership records would help establish whether contacts continued into the period under investigation.
• Records Required — Pre-Hearing Knowledge: Chambers communications, pre-hearing conference notes, and court staff correspondence concerning the December 2, 2022 proceeding before Wilson M.N. Loo involving Lono and opposing counsel Bosko Petricevic.
• What would weaken the hypothesis: Material establishing that Loo first learned of Lono solely through the 2022 filings, with no exposure to the earlier history, would weaken H1/H2 accounts requiring advance knowledge and help distinguish them from H3/H4.

3. The NJSP Investigator Origin Question

• Person or Agency: James Yuen and the purported New Jersey State Police investigator.
• The Question: Which law-enforcement agency, task force, or private client authorized the November 2015 interrogation of Lono in Hawaiʻi? Did any dossier, profile, intelligence record, investigative summary, or informal background material concerning Lono or his North Jersey childhood associates exist? Who assembled it, who could access it, and what informed the investigator’s demonstrated knowledge?
• Records Required: Interagency travel authorizations, task force logs, NJSP special investigations division records, HPD intelligence unit liaison records (November 2015).
• What would weaken the hypothesis: Records showing a limited information source confined to this encounter, with no onward dissemination or use in the prosecution, would weaken the proposed transmission path into the charging narrative.

4. The Leave-Hawaiʻi Proposal Source Question

• Person or Agency: Audrey L.E. Stanley.
• The Question: Who originated the proposal communicated by Stanley that the criminal prosecution could be resolved if Lono agreed to leave Hawaiʻi? Was the proposal communicated by prosecutor Vincent Kanemoto, an investigator, or another institutional actor?
• Records Required: Office of the Public Defender case file, attorney notes, plea-negotiation records, formal/informal email exchanges with City & County prosecutors (2016–2017).
• What would weaken the hypothesis: Records showing an independently developed resolution proposal, alongside documented efforts to preserve and address the threat, would weaken the hypothesis that counsel sought to suppress the threat report.

5. The HPD Threat-Intake and Obstruction Records

• Person or Agency: Officer Brandt and responding HPD personnel.
• The Question: What records exist regarding the post-2022 attempt by Lono to report the Hartmann murder threat, during which Officer Brandt allegedly prevented a second officer from taking the report?
• Records Required: HPD dispatch CAD logs, officer unit logs, station intake logs, body-worn camera audit trails (post-2022).
• What would weaken the hypothesis: A preserved threat report and a documented intake reason unrelated to the earlier prosecution would weaken H1’s interpretation of this episode; records showing no awareness of the earlier history would also weaken H2 explanations requiring that awareness.

6. The Technical-Community Information-Distribution Question

• Person or Agency: Participants and leadership of the local technical community (identity withheld).
• The Question: Following Lono’s return to the local technical community before the Hartmann threat, did anyone communicate his inquiries to external parties or law-enforcement contacts? If so, who communicated what, to whom, and when?
• Records Required: Contemporaneous email lists, board correspondence, and private chat records from the hackerspace network; first establish the visit date and relevant search interval.
• What would weaken the hypothesis: A sufficiently complete search showing no mention outside the people directly approached would weaken propagation through this network.

7. The Closing Argument Preparation Question

• Person or Agency: Vincent Kanemoto.
• The Question: Was the hypothetical-gun argument discussed, documented, reviewed, or approved by anyone else in the prosecutor’s office? What trial-preparation material informed it? Did background notes or informal characterizations of Lono influence the demonstration?
• Records Required: Prosecuting Attorney trial preparation notes, internal trial logs, supervisory review memos.
• What would weaken the hypothesis: Preparation records showing the argument arose solely from trial-specific material, without background-file input or external discussion, would weaken a transmission theory connecting it to the investigator’s frame.

Conclusion: An Open Demand for Records

The interpretation advanced here is that the 2015–2017 prosecution was used to frame Lono: the disputed tax-office encounter supplied the basis for the case; the investigator portrayed him in terms of organized-crime connections; the reported Hartmann threat remained outside the trial record after Lono followed counsel’s advice not to testify; and Kanemoto’s mock pistol portrayed the threatened defendant as dangerous at closing. Assuming the firsthand events occurred as reported, this sequence can be examined without requiring an agreement among every participant.

What remains open is how information moved between actors, what later participants knew, and whether the post-2017 events reflect hush, finishing the job, inherited framing, independent misconduct, or a combination. Their causal relationship to the earlier sequence is the continuing investigation. Unknown transmission is not evidence of independence.

The purpose of the records demands is to establish which information paths existed, which did not, and which explanations survive examination. This open investigation remains active as the underlying records are obtained and examined.

Cross-Examination and Reference Map

• Earlier Chronology: Before the Tax Office: The Portlock-to-Haleiwa Record
• Trial Closing Argument: The Hypothetical Gun: The Closing-Argument Record
• Counsel and Threat Handling: The Threat Report: A Conditional Death Threat, Defense Preparation, and Counsel’s Response
• Judicial Conduct and Rule 8.3(b): The Silent Conspiracy: Professional Responsibility and Sealed Records
• Courtroom Line-of-Sight and Sealing: The Lawyer in the Room