An Attorney Takes Office : New Chief Wants Bigger Role for U.S. Prosecutors in Santa Ana

The gaudy brass lettering that spells out the name of her predecessor still looms large on the wall outside the U.S. attorney’s office here, but Jean A. Kawahara is firmly entrenched in the office he vacated.

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The shelves beside her desk are packed with 26 volumes of “U.S. v. Andonian,” the case that consumed three years of Kawahara’s life and became one of the nation’s biggest money-laundering prosecutions.

More than 20 people have been convicted as a result of Operation Polar Cap, the investigation that spawned the case and which centered on the downtown Los Angeles jewelry district.

The drawers of Kawahara’s filing cabinets are stuffed with bank fraud and other criminal cases, past and present. And to give the office a somewhat personal touch, there are several nearby pieces of art, including a Norman Parkinson photograph and a Malaysian puppet.

After less than six years as an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Kawahara was recently named chief of the Santa Ana branch office by Nora M. Manella, the newly appointed U.S. attorney who heads the Los Angeles-based federal district that spans seven Southern California counties.

Kawahara replaces Paul Seave, the popular prosecutor who left after four years to become second in command for the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento. Like Seave, Kawahara has experience in handling fraud and embezzlement cases, useful in a county that some wags have dubbed the Cote de Fraud .

With the appointment, Kawahara becomes the highest ranking Asian American in the U.S. attorney’s Los Angeles office and, at 33, one of the youngest supervisors in a field of nearly 200 attorneys.

“I certainly feel lucky to be in this position, because it’s a tremendous one,” she said. “I’ve worked on terrific cases with terrific people. Good opportunities have come my way and this is one of them.”

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Born in Los Angeles, Kawahara spent the first eight years of her life in Gardena before her family moved to Palos Verdes, where she attended high school. She graduated from Brown University and got her law degree from UC Berkeley. After 2 1/2 years in private practice, where she specialized in business litigation, she was hired into the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles in early 1988.

Almost immediately, she was pulled into the jewelry mart case, a complicated investigation that law enforcement officials say spanned four years of illegal activity by jewelry companies and involved the laundering of some $500 million.

Kawahara was the junior prosecutor in the first phase of the trial, which ended with the convictions of five defendants and guilty pleas by three others. But charges against four defendants were dismissed, and four others were acquitted, fueling criticism that the government had overcharged the case.

Anna Ho, an attorney who represented a Lebanese immigrant held without bail for 22 months before being acquitted, was highly critical of the government’s case but does not hold Kawahara responsible for the prosecution.

“I have always felt the government was overzealous in prosecuting the case but I’m not sure that she was in total control of the case,” Ho said. “She was a straight-shooter and did her best. She was always prepared and on the ball.”

A small gesture that has always stuck with Ho was Kawahara’s acceptance of the cookies that Ho brings to every trial. Some prosecutors, she said, absolutely refuse to share in the treat, believing that it will somehow compromise their objectivity.

“In my book, there are prosecutors and there are human beings,” Ho said. “Jean is a human being. She can treat your client as a person even if she has strong evidence against your client. And she always maintained her demeanor. There were times when you could tell she had one hour of sleep but she was always together.”

Ho said she did not feel the same way about Kawahara’s fellow prosecutor in the case, Russell Hayman, and declined to comment about his performance.

Kawahara remembers the case as all-consuming. And while she learned a great deal about legal issues, investigative procedures and other experiences, she rarely had a weekend off in three years.

With the verdicts reached in the jewelry mart cases in January, 1991, Kawahara was off to the major fraud unit to grapple with yet more cases of white-collar crime. She had three trials that year, but in December she was brought into the case of Newport Beach investment adviser Steven D. Wymer, who was arrested on federal fraud charges in connection with the disappearance of $100 million of his clients’ money.

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For most of 1992, Kawahara said, she and other prosecutors tried to unravel a thicket of investments that governments, like the cities of Orange and Torrance, thought they had made in investment grade securities through Wymer’s financial management firm.

But prosecutors showed that much of the money was diverted to finance Wymer’s lavish lifestyle and purchase property, luxury automobiles, boats and fine art. Some cities, like Orange, claimed to have lost millions of dollars.

With the case set for trial, Wymer’s attorney struck a deal with prosecutors in September, 1992. Wymer pleaded guilty to nine federal charges of racketeering, stock fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud and obstructing justice.

Prosecutors asked that he be sentenced to 15 to 20 years in prison. Wymer asked for less than 10 years. He was sentenced to 14 1/2 years and agreed to cooperate with authorities in trying to regain some of the missing money. So far, only about $10 million has been recovered.

Although it was difficult to sort through the web of securities transactions in trying to track the missing $100 million, Kawahara said prosecuting the case was not that hard.

“The case was really overwhelming,” she said. “It was so easy to see that if someone says you were supposed to have a lot of money and you don’t have any of it, while (Wymer) could come up with some excuses, the bottom line is the bottom line. The best he could do for himself was plead guilty and try to assist the government and the victims.”

Wymer’s defense attorney, James D. Riddet of Santa Ana, said he was saddened to see Seave leave the local U.S. attorney’s office but was pleased to hear that Kawahara was replacing him.

“I have a high regard for her ability,” he said. “She’s smart and fair. She’s reasonable. I would say she’s not particularly aggressive, but I put a bad connotation on aggressive. She obeys the rules and still represents the government’s interests very well.”

Some defense attorneys say Kawahara can be impersonal, distant and somewhat inflexible when it comes to making deals, but they also say she is highly ethical and well versed in the law, and is an exhaustive researcher.

Outgoing U.S. Atty. Terree A. Bowers calls her “exceptionally bright and a hard worker with superlative people skills.”

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With experience on several large investigations and with experience in white-collar prosecutions, Bowers said Kawahara is ready to head the 11-person office in Santa Ana.

“She has extensive experience in the Los Angeles office and has terrific potential,” he said. “You tend to get a lot of experience in a short period of time in the L.A. office.”

Spending as many hours in the office as she does, Kawahara met her husband on the job. In May, she married Dean G. Dunlavey, deputy chief of the narcotics section in the U.S. attorney’s office.

She is a registered Democrat. He is a registered Republican. So when it comes to some issues, such as paying taxes for social services, the pair part company.

“Our party registration alone is an indication that we don’t agree on everything, but our fundamental approach to the job is similar,” she said. “It’s safe to say, however, that during the presidential election, we each voted the party line.”

Kawahara comes from a financial family. Her father is Herbert G. Kawahara, a former president of the Pacific Stock Exchange and once the top executive in Southern California for E.F. Hutton. Her older sister was an investment banker and her younger brother is a stockbroker.

Her first concern in the Santa Ana office has been to get more attorneys. In her office, which handles federal prosecutions from San Bernardino and Riverside counties as well, attorneys are required to file cases based on the number of judges in the local U.S. District Court.

“We are required to handle twice as many cases per assistant (U.S. attorney) as in L.A.,” she said. “As a consequence, the cases we would like to handle down here get handled by the L.A. office. What I would like to see is us handling cases in Orange County that happen in Orange County.”

Although she will be hampered by a current hiring freeze and a mandate by the Clinton Administration to downsize the government, Kawahara said the need is overwhelming.

“For the amount of crime that occurs down here, we just need more help,” she said. “Part of it is logistics, making it easier for agents and witnesses, but more importantly, this is an important metropolitan center separate and distinct from Los Angeles.”

Being head of the Santa Ana office, which is only 6 years old, is a unique opportunity to shape strategies for prosecuting all kinds of crime, she said.

“I have the opportunity to build an office rather than just being part of what is already a tremendous office,” she said. “Our presence . . . ought to be greater than it is now. There are certainly as many cases generated out of this area as can be handled here and we ought to be more sensitive to what is happening here.”

Jean A. Kawahara New job: Chief of the Santa Ana branch of the U.S. attorney’s office Age: 33 Major prosecutions: Operation Polar Cap, which involved money laundering in downtown Los Angeles jewelry district; Steven D. Wymer, the Newport Beach investment adviser sentenced to 14 1/2 years in prison for stealing $92 million Family: Married to Dean G. Dunlavey, deputy chief of narcotics section in U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles; father is Herbert G. Kawahara, former president of the Pacific Stock Exchange Attitude: “I have the opportunity to build an office rather than being part of what is already a tremendous office. Our presence out of this area ought to be greater than it is now. There are certainly as many cases generated out of this area as can be handled here and we ought to be more sensitive to what is happening here.” Source: Jean Kawahara