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The first day of witness testimony in the trial of accused crime boss Michael Miske Jr. included an emotional account from a 78-year-old Honolulu accountant who described being kidnapped and assaulted by two men in an attempt to collect around $900,000 in debt.

Seung Ji Robert Lee needed to take breaks to collect himself as he recounted the night of Oct. 17, 2017, when two men met him in the parking lot of Fisherman’s Wharf at Kewalo Basin, showed him police badges and shoved him into the backseat of a car where they zip tied his hands and put a bag sealed with duct tape over his head. 

The event Lee described is outlined in a plea agreement reached by one of Miske’s former co-defendants, Preston Kimoto. Kimoto pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping using a facility of interstate commerce in July.

Kimoto, a longtime manager for Miske’s company Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control, was approached by a woman in May 2017 who told him Lee owed her father around $900,000 and asked if he knew anyone who could help collect the debt, the plea agreement says. 

Kimoto then asked Miske if he knew anyone, and he said yes, according to the agreement. 

Kimoto met with Miske and another former co-defendant, Wayne Miller, to plan the kidnapping of Lee, the agreement says. 

Lee described his fear after the bag went over his head. “I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t even breathe,” he said. 

The assailants then turned up the radio to the highest volume and started hitting him, he said. They drove around to various locations and asked him if he had storage or if he had money hidden. 

“Unless you tell us, you know what’s going to happen,” he told the court they said.

After hours of driving, he insisted that he didn’t have any money, and they brought him back to the Kewalo Basin parking lot where they removed the duct tape and cut the zip ties around his wrists, he said. 

He drove home, despite the fact that he had lost his glasses and could barely see, he said. When his wife saw his injuries, she took him to the emergency room at Straub Medical Center. A hospital worker suspected he’d been beaten and called the police, Lee said. 

“I told myself I better not say anything,” he said. “I only described briefly what happened to the detective.” 

Prosecutors showed photos of Lee’s injuries to the jury, which included swollen, red hands, a red swollen face and indentations on his wrists from the zip ties. 

Lee also told jurors that the man he owed money to was a former business associate who had been threatening him for months before the kidnapping. That detail was not mentioned in the plea agreement.  

The plea agreement states Miller and another man named Jonah Ortiz were the ones who kidnapped Lee. Ortiz pleaded guilty to one count of kidnapping and another count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 50 grams or more of methamphetamine in 2019. 

Miller, Ortiz and Kimoto are on the government’s witness list. 

According to Kimoto’s plea agreement, the woman who had originally asked him to help her collect the debt from Lee paid him $90,000 for the kidnapping even though the debt was never collected. Kimoto said he delivered all of the payments to Miske, according to the agreement. 

In addition to Lee’s testimony, prosecutors and defense attorneys questioned three Honolulu police officers as witnesses and one digital forensic expert who previously worked for the Honolulu Police Department. 

Defense attorney Michael Kennedy ran out of time while cross-examining Lee and said he would continue Wednesday morning.

Kennedy said outside the courtroom that Lee was the victim of a “horrific” kidnapping but that Miske was not involved and the two men had no connection.

“Mr. Miske has said he’s not guilty of this,” he said. “We’re bringing the real story here to the court, to these jurors who will decide the case not on what’s been out in the press but what witnesses testify to in this courtroom under oath.”