Prosecutors
want to keep Tam
jailed in Ewa fraud

The defense attorney
will argue Monday that
the Ewa defendant
should be free

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Star-Bulletin

Prosecutors say Norman Tam played a key role in the Ewa Villages fraudulent relocation scheme and want to keep him in Oahu Community Correctional Center on $330,000 bail.

Tam authorized $5.5 million in payments to moving and hauling companies which were unlicensed, had no telephone numbers or weren't located at the sites stated on bid applications, prosecutors said.

But Mark Zenger, Tam's attorney, described his client as "a kindhearted, intelligent, family man" who has been supporting an adopted teen-age daughter and her young child."

A 17-year employee of the city Department of Housing and Community Development, Tam did no wrong and, through his union, is fighting his dismissal from his job as fair housing officer, the attorney said.

Zenger's motion to have Tam released to the supervision of his mother will be heard Monday by Circuit Judge Frances Wong.

Tam -- accused of 34 counts of theft, forgery, money laundering, bribery and related charges -- is the last of the eight people indicted in the Ewa Villages case still in jail.

Co-defendants Michael Kahapea, Claude Hebaru and Russell J. Williams are out on supervised release, while the other four have made bail.

Deputy Prosecutor Christopher Young, in court documents arguing against Tam's release, said Tam was supposed to ensure bids were in order and pay moving companies only after relocation work was done.

"Because of . . . Tam's knowledge of city procedures, he was able to mislead other city employees to believe that commercial tenants had been relocated from Ewa Villages" when often they had not, Young wrote.

Tam, Young said, "also manipulated the city process by submitting fraudulent bid lists and documents as part of the payment request forms."

Tam also failed to disclose to superiors that a son-in-law had received cleanup and lawn-care jobs in Ewa Villages and other city projects, Young said.

"The sophistication, magnitude and continued participation of the defendant in the Ewa and various other projects demonstrates that the defendant poses a serious risk that he will continue to engage in illegal activity and thus poses a danger to the community," Young wrote.

Zenger, in court documents, says Tam is not a flight risk. A lifelong resident of Oahu, he has children and other family here.

He is also too weak to leave, having suffered a near-fatal heart ailment in 1995, Zenger said.

Tam has not been able to make bail because he has little money, Zenger added.

His second mortgage on the leasehold Pearl City townhouse where he lives is currently being paid by his mother, he said.