BY JIM DOOLEY – Peter Hsieh, the newly-hired head of enforcement in the state office that regulates financial 
securities, has been demoted following news stories in Hawaii Reporter about his serious personal financial problems, the state said today.
Brent Suyama, spokesman for the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, said an investigation of Hsieh is ongoing.
Since the demotion, Hsieh “is doing research,” said Suyama.
“He’s not in charge of any cases,” Suyama said.
Hsieh (pronounced Shay) did not disclose to DCCA authorities that he filed bankruptcy last year, listing some $900,000 in tax and child support debts.
A former business associate, lawyer Joseph Huster, filed a civil fraud complaint against Hsieh in bankruptcy court in late February, after the state hired Hsieh as chief enforcement attorney in the DCCS securities division.
Last year, the Hawaii Supreme Court publicly reprimanded Hsieh for mishandling client trust fund accounts in his private law practice in 2006.
Hsieh blamed those problems on his bookkeeper, according to public records.
Hsieh disclosed the reprimand before DCCA hired him February 13 for the securities post, Director Keali’i Lopez told Hawaii Reporter late last month.
But Lopez didn’t know about Hsieh’s tax and child support debts or the fraud allegation until questioned about them early this month April by Hawaii Reporter.
“We are extremely concerned and we have begun our own internal investigation,” Lopez said through Suyama April 5.
Hsieh declared personal bankruptcy last year, stating that he owed more than $600,000 to the IRS and more than $146,000 in state tax arrearages. Hsieh bankruptcy
Hsieh also reported that he owed his ex-wife $141,000 for unpaid child support, education and medical coverage obligations.
Hsieh was discharged from bankruptcy earlier this year and some of his tax debts are believed to have been forgiven.
But other tax debts are covered by liens filed against him and he is obligated to pay them. Child support debts are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.
The fraud complaint filed by Huster is pending. Hsieh has denied the allegation.
Hsieh has been a litigation attorney for 30 years. The duties of securities enforcement chief include oversight of four attorneys and seven investigators.
Sort of reminds me of Eleanor Holmes Norton, a non-voting (but fully paid) and hard-left member of Congress from DC. Norton, now 31 years into her stint in Congress, somehow neglected to pay taxes for a number of years before she was elected to Congress. Of course, when one comes out of the sinkhole of a city were the federal gov’t is headquartered and where once-Mayor Marion Barry (now a city council member) got stung on video smoking crack in a DC hotel with his mistress, eventually sent to prison (where he got his crew to bring along a hooker who performed fellatio on him in a corner of the prisoners’ visitation room), released, re-elected to mayor, all the while driving DC into a fiscal ditch that required a federal take-over in 2005. Both were one-time members of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Cte. (SNCC) — a predecessor to the political-extortion-based “community organizing” gig Obama later claimed as his profession. What do all these people, including Hsieh, have in common? They are all Democrats. (Abercrombie would have fit right in had he gone off to the big city instead of staying here in Hawaii to “help” us out.)
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