The defendant is being charged with theft after he allegedly scammed the former pastor out of $137,000 and received thousands more from other church members.
According to the deputy prosecutor, 32-year-old Leon Faamama played on the sympathies of a retired pastor.
"This elderly victim wanted to help the defendant and wanted him to succeed in drug court and to become clean and sober," said Deputy Prosecutor Chris Van Marter.
The defendant was participating in Drug Court, which helps drug users get on the right path.
"He was telling the victim that the drug court was charging him exorbitant drug court fees, exorbitant fees for clean and sober house, both of
which were completely false," Van Marter said.
Van Marter says the scheme also involved fake names of a probation officer and lawyer…even a fake lawsuit.
"He told the victim that he had a filed a lawsuit against the drug court administrator, that Judge Alm was aware of it, and he was going to win the lawsuit and when he won the lawsuit, he would pay the victim back all the money," Van Marter said.
For almost a year, even as recently as a few weeks ago, the defendant managed to swindle John Vaughn out of $137,000. Vaughn was the pastor of Kalihi Baptist Church, until he retired this past April. According to the deputy prosecutor, the retired pastor felt so strongly about helping the victim, he solicited loans from other church members. Bank officials notified police after seeing suspicious transactions in the victim’s account.
"Unfortunately by that time the victim had drained his home equity line of credit account, maxed out all his credit cards, drained his savings and all that money was given to the defendant," he said.
The deputy prosecutor is trying to help the victim recover some of the money. But, that might not be enough.
"He’s never going to be the same, you know when you’re a victim of this sort of crime, you never trust people in the same way that you did before so I’m sure it’s going to have some lasting effects on he and his wife," Van Marter said.
The defendant is facing up to 10 years in prison.
See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
