HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - A Waipahu woman will serve a two-year prison sentence for filing false tax returns and wire fraud.
U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson said that Heidi Cafirma was also sentenced on Sept. 30 to three years of supervised release, ordered to forfeit $70,500 and pay up to over $1 million in restitution by U.S. District Judge Shanlyn A.S. Park.
Cafirma pled guilty pursuant to a plea agreement in Dec. 2025.
In 2020, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act created the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) insurance program to provide emergency unemployment payments for workers whose jobs were impacted by the pandemic but who were ineligible for traditional state unemployment insurance benefits.
To obtain either unemployment insurance payments, applicants could submit a claim online. If approved, the U.S. Treasury typically deposited payments every week into a claimant’s bank account. However, claimants were required to certify their eligibility on a weekly basis.
According to court documents, Cafirma admitted that between June 2020 and Sept. 2021, she submitted 22 false claims online for unemployment insurance benefit payments for herself.
Cafirma falsely claimed that she was unemployed and not receiving income, despite receiving over $1 million in income during that period from her and her husband’s unlicensed construction business.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, she fraudulently obtained at least $70,500 in unemployment...
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