Former sports anchor pleads guilty to conspiracy

Former television sports anchor and current HART spokesman Russell Yama­noha pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court to conspiring to rig a union election when he was an IBEW Local 1260 official.

Yamanoha, 52, faces a maximum one-year prison term at sentencing in December.

He became an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers member when he started working at KHNL as a photographer. He later became a sports reporter and sports anchor.

After KHNL ended its in-house news operation, Yamanoha joined IBEW as a business representative. He later became the union’s assistant business manager and director of media. In 2015, the year he helped rig the election, Yamanoha’s union salary was $141,520 and he received $1,134 in allowances.

Yamanoha has been working as an information specialist for the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation since May 2017.

The union election was over an unpopular proposal to increase the dues the union collects from its members.

The government says then-IBEW Local 1260 Business Manager/Financial Secretary Brian Ahakuelo made the proposal because he needed to replenish more than $1.4 million in union money he had embezzled.

A federal grand jury returned a 70-count indictment last month charging Ahakuelo; his wife, Marilyn Ahakuelo; and his sister-in-law Jennifer Estencion with wire fraud, money laundering, embezzling union assets and conspiracy.

All three pleaded not guilty and are scheduled to stand trial in October.

According to the indictment, the Ahakuelos spent union money on personal travel, to purchase a pickup truck for Marilyn Ahakuelo and to pay the union salary of a son-in-law as training coordinator for a nonexistent training program.

In exchange for Yamanoha’s guilty plea and agreement to cooperate, the government promises not to charge him with additional crimes for his known actions.

Yamanoha and three other former union members provided investigators details of how they rigged the election at the local’s Guam unit by replacing real ballots with fake ones they had filled out, and are expected to continue their cooperation in the prosecution of the Ahakuelos and Estencion. Daniel Rose, Michael Brittain and Lee Ann Miyamura are scheduled to plead guilty later this month.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Albanese told U.S. Magistrate Judge Wes R. Porter on Tuesday that the union’s eight other units already had voted on the dues hike, and the conspirators needed the Guam unit’s approval for the proposal to pass.