Former bookkeeper of Maui nursery sentenced to 43 months of prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud

HONOLULU, Hawaii – Thelma Pascua-Suyat, 64, of Maui, Hawaii, was sentenced today in federal court by Senior United States District Judge Susan Oki Mollway to 43 months of imprisonment for wire fraud. As part of her sentence, Pascua-Suyat must serve three years of supervised release, and pay $1,167,895.47 in restitution.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Hawaii Kenji M. Price announced that, according to court documents and information presented in court, from 2008 to 2016, Pascua-Suyat used her position as the bookkeeper for Ki-Hana Nursery, a Maui County nursery business, to falsify electronic bookkeeping records and steal over $1.3 million dollars from the Nursery. Pascua-Suyat’s scheme to defraud Ki-Hana Nursery lasted over the course of 7 years and that during that time she used the funds of Ki-Hana to pay over $1 million dollars in personal credit card debt and to make over $65,000 in payments on her home mortgage.

The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson.