A former Hawai‘i County housing official was sentenced Thursday to nearly four years in prison over a scheme that defrauded the county for nearly $11 million.
Alan Scott Rudo, 59, was a housing specialist at the Hawai‘i County Office of Housing and Community Development between 2006 and 2018. During his tenure at the department, Rudo conspired with accomplices to fraudulently award housing development agreements and affordable housing credits to those accomplices’ businesses, pocketing about $1.9 million in bribes and kickbacks.
Through those development agreements, the companies received land valued at about $10.9 million, on which they never built a single unit of housing. The conspirators then sold or transferred the land and the affordable housing credits for a tidy profit.
Rudo was charged in 2022 with conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud; he pled guilty that same day. Rudo testified at a 2025 trial of his co-conspirators, and was himself sentenced in U.S. District Court on Thursday.
Judge Jill Otake handed down a sentence of 46 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
In a sentencing statement submitted to the court, Rudo apologized for his actions.
“I betrayed the trust the community placed in me and I caused harm that I can never take back,” Rudo wrote. “I think about that every day and I accept full responsibility for my actions. There is no excuse for the choices I made.”
Rudo wrote the investigation has cost him his marriage, his home and his career, and has forced him to “rebuild [himself] from the ground up.” He said he chose to cooperate with the investigation against his former associates “because it was the right thing to do,” and that he is “committed to doing better.”
His associates — attorney Paul Sulla, 79, of Hilo; attorney Gary Zamber, 56, of Kea‘au; and businessman Rajesh Budhabhatti, 65, formerly of the Big Island — were themselves charged with conspiracy to commit honest services wife fraud and nine counts of honest services wire fraud, and the three were convicted by a federal jury in 2025.
Rudo’s co-conspirators were sentenced earlier this year. Zamber was sentenced to 70 months in prison in January, Budhabhatti was sentenced to 90 months in February and Sulla was sentenced to 60 months in April.
For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up here for our free Daily Edition newsletter.
