Just before noon today, on their fourth day of deliberation, the 12 jurors for the Department of Justice\u2019s case against Paul Joseph Sulla, Jr., Gary Charles Zamber, and Rajesh P. Budhabhatti reconvened before U.S. District Judge Jill A. Otake to deliver their verdict: Guilty on all counts.
The men had each been charged with one county of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and nine counts of honest services wire fraud. Sulla had also been charged with money laundering.
The charges stemmed from affordable housing schemes carried out between 2014 and 2021 with former Hawai\u02bbi County Office of Housing and Community Development employee Alan Rudo.
Rudo pleaded guilty in 2022 to his part, which included using his position within the office to provide affordable housing agreements and affordable housing credits to companies established, controlled and\/or co-owned in some fashion by the other three.
In finding the men guilty, the jury supported the Department of Justice\u2019s argument that they provided Rudo with things of value \u2014 money, land, ownership interest \u2014 in exchange for his official acts that benefitted all of them.
Sulla is set to be sentenced on October 21, Zamber on October 7, and Budhabhatti on October 8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Teresa Dawson<\/strong> Just before noon today, on their fourth day of deliberation, the 12 jurors for the Department of Justice’s case against Paul Joseph Sulla, Jr., Gary Charles Zamber, and Rajesh P. Budhabhatti reconvened before U.S. District Judge Jill A. Otake to … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[351,538],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-16577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eh-xtra","category-june-2025","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
For more background, see this month\u2019s story on the trial, \u201cDefendants in Affordable Housing Case Argue It Was \u2018Self-Dealing,\u2019 Not Fraud<\/a>,\u201d as well as the following, which is just a sampling of\u00a0Environment Hawai\u02bbi\u2019<\/em>s extensive coverage of this story over the years:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBefore County Housing Fraud Trial, Motions Seek to Delimit Evidence<\/a>\u201d (May 2025)\u201cThree Arraigned in Federal Court In Hawai\u02bbi County Housing Fraud Case<\/a>” (September 2022)”Four Charged in Schemes to Defraud Hawai\u2018i County Housing Program<\/a>\u201d (August 2022)\u201cThe Intriguing History That Underlies A Kona Affordable Housing Development<\/a>\u201d \u00a0and \u00a0\u201cHe Owned the Land for Just a Day, But Received 212 Credits from County<\/a>\u201d (June 2022)\u201cAs Owner Is Held in Moscow Jail, LUC Mulls Reverting Waikoloa Land<\/a>\u201d (July 2018)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"