A former Hawaiʻi defense contractor convicted of stealing $13 million in Covid relief money through a series of fraudulent loans has been ordered to pay it back. 

Martin Kao was sentenced in federal court on Thursday to 87 months in prison for defrauding the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program and falsifying documents in an application for a $3 million mortgage to purchase a house in Honolulu. 

U.S. District Court Judge Leslie Kobayashi ordered Kao to pay more than $12.8 million in restitution to the Small Business Administration, as well as forfeit the money he received from fraudulent loans meant to help companies weather the pandemic.

He was also sentenced to 12,800 hours of community service, which amounts to six years of working 40 hours a week.

“Because there’s so many aspects to the sentence, we really need time to review it and see what our options are at this point,” said Kao’s attorney Victor Bakke.

Kao pleaded guilty to both the relief fraud and bank fraud charges. During his court battles, he was allowed to attend classes at Harvard University. 

During the pandemic, Kao applied for three different loans, two from banks in Hawaiʻi and one on the mainland, in which he falsified documents, misrepresented the number of employees at his company and neglected to mention previous pandemic support he’d received. 

“Martin Kao, motivated by greed, chose to repeatedly lie about his assets and prior loans in order to obtain millions of dollars in funds that were intended to help businesses staggered by the Covid-19 pandemic,” Acting United States Attorney Kenneth Sorenson said in a press release.