A former federal agriculture official in Honolulu has admitted he took a $5,000 “thank you” check tied to a pandemic-era farm payment, pleading guilty in federal court to accepting an illegal gratuity.
Jason Shitanishi, 60, a former county executive director with the Farm Service Agency in Honolulu, acknowledged on Friday that he signed off on a Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) application that led to a $65,745 federal payment and later pocketed a $5,000 check from the applicant. He deposited the money into his personal bank account. Sentencing is set for July in Honolulu federal court.
According to prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office, the CFAP application at the center of the case was submitted in April 2021 and falsely claimed $685,500 in 2019 commodity sales while also listing the wrong county for the farm. At the time, Shitanishi was serving as the County Executive Director for the City and County of Honolulu’s Farm Service Agency office in 2020 and 2021. Prosecutors say he obtained approvals to handle the file in Honolulu and then approved the application, which triggered the $65,745 CFAP payment to the applicant.
How prosecutors say the scheme worked
In a post on X from the U.S. Attorney's Office, prosecutors said the applicant handed Shitanishi a $5,000 check on April 18, 2021, after the federal payment went out. Shitanishi then deposited the check into his personal account.
Investigators say Shitanishi understood that the money was effectively a payoff for accepting responsibility for a Maui farm’s application instead of routing it to the Farm Service Agency’s Maui County executive director, who ordinarily would have handled it. The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations handled the probe, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregg Paris Yates is prosecuting the case.
CFAP's scale and oversight concerns
The Coronavirus Food Assistance Program launched in April 2020 to send direct payments to agricultural producers hit by the pandemic, with county Farm Service Agency offices handling local applications, according to the USDA. The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that CFAP ultimately disbursed about $31 billion and flagged weaknesses in early spot checks and reviews that made it tougher to catch improper payments, recommending stronger, risk-based oversight going forward.
Those gaps in early safeguards help explain how county-level approval decisions, like the one described in Shitanishi’s case, could steer substantial federal funds out the door when applications were not fully vetted.
Legal consequences
Shitanishi pleaded guilty to one count of receiving an illegal gratuity as a public official. The charge carries a statutory maximum of two years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and up to one year of supervised release, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Sentencing is scheduled for July 17, 2026, before Senior U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor.
In announcing the plea, U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson said public officials are “entrusted to execute their duties honestly and with integrity.” The case adds to the broader national scrutiny of pandemic relief programs and underscores how much discretion local Farm Service Agency officials wielded in deciding who received large federal payments.
The case will return to court in July, when Honolulu’s agricultural community and the public at large will see how the court measures a breach of public trust in a program meant to help farmers weather a crisis.
