A former city employee was sentenced to a year in prison yesterday after he admitted taking bribes for 12 years in exchange for fraudulently updating motor vehicle registrations for companies and private citizens at a cost of more than $50,000 to the city.

The prosecutor called the sentence for former Department of Motor Vehicles employee Brian K. Hamasaki "a slap on the wrist" that undermines the justice system.

Due to a lack of evidence and the fact that registration records before 2001 have been purged, investigators could not determine exactly how much money was diverted from city coffers, according to police and city prosecutors.

Circuit Judge Richard K. Perkins sentenced Hamasaki to one year in prison and five years of probation.

Perkins also ordered Hamasaki, who pleaded guilty April 28, to pay $35,646.88 in restitution to the city. He also must pay $1,405 in probation, court and drug-assessment fees.

"It's clear to me that there is no excuse for what Mr. Hamasaki did. It brought shame on him and it undermined ... our government," Perkins said. "Mr. Hamasaki needs to be punished and other people need to be deterred."

Hamasaki, 51, faced charges of first-degree theft, second-degree theft, tampering with a government record and two counts of bribery. He must report to prison at 9 a.m. tomorrow.

Dressed in an aloha shirt and blue jeans, Hamasaki, who worked at the satellite city hall below Fort Street Mall, wept before speaking during sentencing.

"I would like to say sorry to the city and the public for what I did," he said. "I would like to say sorry to my family for making shame on the Hamasaki name."

Deputy city prosecutor Christopher T. Van Marter had asked Perkins to sentence Hamasaki to 15 years in prison, saying a city employee violated the public trust and cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

Van Marter argued that Hamasaki did not turn over evidence or help investigators identify all the companies and people who avoided paying fees.

He cited one example where investigators found that Hamasaki helped a trucking company by accepting 106 bribes in exchange for fraudulently updating a fleet of 19 semi-trucks, costing the city $34,000.

"We're disappointed. A public official accepted bribes for over 12 years," said Van Marter outside of court. "The court's sentence is a slap on the wrist. It strikes a blow to the integrity of the criminal justice system."

Hamasaki's attorney, William H. Jameson Jr., argued in court that Hamasaki did not have a journal documenting every fraudulent action he committed despite claims by confidential informants and the prosecution that he did.

Jameson cited Hamasaki's responsibilities as a caregiver to his ailing mother-in-law and his responsibilities to his two children and wife as reasons for requesting probation.

Outside of court, Jameson said his client was satisfied with Perkins' sentence considering that he was facing 15 years in prison under the prosecution's request. Jameson did not return a call seeking further comment.

Hamasaki and his wife, Diane, declined comment after the sentencing.

Inside the court, Diane Hamasaki told the judge, "I'm here because I love my husband and I support him. What he did was wrong and we explained it to our children."

TWO SCHEMES ALLEGED

During 12 years of taking bribes in exchange for fraudulently updating vehicle registrations, Hamasaki used two schemes, court documents say.

In the first method, he figured out that the city was using one computer system to update the vehicle registration paperwork and another to process payment and the collection of fees.

Hamasaki would access the city's motor vehicle computer database and call up a specific vehicle registration that he promised to fix for a fee. Normally, he would then input a valid vehicle emblem number from a list of valid numbers maintained by the DMV, but Hamasaki learned that the computer would have no way of knowing whether the number he entered was legitimate or not.

After inputting a fake emblem number, Hamasaki would enter an amount and update the registration. The amount was meaningless because the customer would never pay it, according to court documents.

Hamasaki would then process an "emblem replacement request" by retrieving the vehicle's information and entering a valid emblem number from the DMV log. The replacement cost only 50 cents.

That way the "customer" could avoid paying the actual amount to update the vehicle's registration, according to the documents.

Hamasaki would then print the new annual vehicle registration paperwork and exchange it for bribe money, which ranged from $700 to $1,400 per request, according to the documents.

The second method required more cooperation from the customer.

Hamasaki would update the vehicle's paperwork with a fake emblem number. He would then tell the customer to go to their local DMV office and submit an emblem replacement request, according to court documents.

The customer would go to a local DMV office, lie about why they needed a replacement, fill out paperwork, pay 50 cents and receive a replacement emblem. The customer would tell Hamasaki after the paperwork was filed.

He would then access the customer's vehicle record information and print out the paperwork and exchange it for money.

His scheme unraveled after two people he had helped for years became confidential informants for police after Hamasaki raised the bribe he charged to falsify their records.

He was arrested at a Subway restaurant and admitted his schemes to investigators.

Hamasaki was also arrested last year on drug charges after Transportation Security Administration screeners seized methamphetamine and marijuana paraphernalia from him at Honolulu International Airport before a flight to Las Vegas.

He pleaded guilty to charges of third-degree promotion of dangerous and detrimental drugs.