A 66-year-old Kona woman accused of running a coffee fraud scheme worth more than $5.2 million is set to plead not guilty Wednesday to a superseding indictment that now includes tax charges on top of counts alleging wire fraud, monetary transactions involving unlawfully derived property, and obstruction of an official proceeding. Patricia Johnson is accused of selling beans sourced from countries like Brazil, Colombia and Guatemala as pure Kona coffee for more than a decade, all while her business brought in millions.
According to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Johnson plans to plead not guilty on Wednesday to a 28-count superseding indictment. The original indictment had 24 counts: 16 counts of wire fraud, five counts tied to monetary transactions involving unlawfully derived property, and three counts of obstructing an official proceeding. A federal grand jury added four new counts of filing false income tax returns on October 1, accusing Johnson of understating her income on IRS Form 1040 filings from 2019 to 2022. The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking forfeiture of $5,260,095 from her business.
Johnson's Kona Coffee Cafe, which opened in the 1990s, sold drinks, coffee beans and chocolate-covered coffee beans marketed as 100% Kona coffee. The physical shop is now closed, though its online business remains open. Prosecutors allege Johnson advertised and sold coffee as 100% Kona between October 2012 and April 2024 despite knowing it contained no actual Kona beans, and that she bought more than 194,000 pounds of green coffee beans along with 68,000 pounds of peaberry beans from wholesalers in Seattle and Oakland rather than from Big Island farms.
A Decade-Long Scheme Allegedly Routed Through Utah
The scale of the alleged operation stretches well beyond the beans purchased on the mainland. Court records reported by the Kona Coffee Farmers Association describe prosecutors alleging Johnson bought more than 494,000 pounds of coffee beans from a second foreign wholesaler and used a Utah-based shipping company for 12 years to route foreign beans into her business while bypassing USDA and state agricultural inspection mechanisms.
State investigators with the Hawaii Department of the Attorney General had already been looking into Johnson's business for coffee mislabeling since 2019, well before the federal case took shape. When interviewed in June 2021, Johnson reportedly claimed she had used the same local farm and roaster for 25 years — but that roaster told investigators they hadn't worked with her in decades, per the same organization's reporting on the case.
Federal agents seized more than $830,000 in cash in April 2024 while searching Johnson's business, home, storage units and four safe deposit boxes at a Kona bank branch. Johnson was arrested in Kona in September 2025 and taken into custody at the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu. Her attorney, William A. Harrison, criticized federal agents at the time for raiding her home in full tactical gear with weapons drawn, saying he had been in communication with federal prosecutors for more than a year and that she would have surrendered voluntarily.
Witness-Manipulation Allegations and Tax Charges Add to the Case
Federal prosecutors have also accused Johnson of trying to manipulate federal grand jury witnesses into changing their testimony, alleging she told one witness to plead the fifth and say nothing about coffee. Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca A. Perlmutter is prosecuting the case. Harrison has pushed back on the expanded charges, telling the Star-Advertiser that Johnson is innocent and will plead not guilty to the additional charges, just as she did to the original ones, and arguing that adding new counts does not strengthen the government's case since an indictment is only an accusation.
Under Hawaii law, coffee claiming to be 100% Hawaii-grown and Hawaii-processed must carry an identity statement naming the single geographic origin followed by the word coffee, with 100% allowed to precede that origin only when the claim is true. Kona coffee specifically must be grown in the Kona district and labeled with an accurate percentage whenever it's mixed with other beans. Prosecutors allege Johnson sold no actual Kona coffee beans at all while marketing her products under that name.
The Bigger Fight Over Hawaii's Coffee Brand
Johnson's case lands amid a broader, years-long push by Big Island growers to protect the Kona name from counterfeit beans. Inc. Magazine reported that the farmer group obtained nearly $20 million in legal settlements and that the litigation involved scientific testing. A class-action lawsuit brought by Kona coffee farmers targeted major retailers and roasters accused of selling commodity beans falsely designated as Kona coffee. Lieff Cabraser also played a role in Kona coffee litigation.
The mismatch between supply and demand helps explain why fraud has been so persistent. During the 2019–2023 litigation, plaintiffs estimated that while farms in Kona harvest roughly 2.7 million pounds of authentic coffee per year, more than 20 million pounds of coffee are marketed globally under the Kona name annually, according to Top Class Actions. Authentic Kona coffee commands premium prices of around $50 per pound due to limited acreage and hand-harvesting costs, making it a tempting target for counterfeiters.
Hawaii lawmakers have tried to close the regulatory gaps that allow this kind of fraud to persist. Governor Josh Green signed House Bill 2298 into law in July 2024, raising the mandatory minimum content of origin-named coffee in Hawaii-sold blends from 10% to 51% by weight effective July 1, 2027 — a threshold that had remained unchanged for more than 30 years despite industry pushback. Separately, the Hawaii Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity has noted that enforcement relies heavily on public complaints due to a lack of dedicated inspectors.
Johnson's not-guilty plea is expected Wednesday in federal court. Her case now includes allegations spanning wire fraud, monetary transactions involving unlawfully derived property, obstruction and filing false income tax returns, all tied to a business that prosecutors say sold foreign beans under the Kona label for more than a decade.
