A Waipahu woman has pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns and committing wire fraud after falsely claiming she was out of work for more than a year while receiving pandemic unemployment benefits. Heidi Cafirma, identified as 50 years old in the case, admitted to collecting roughly $70,500 in fraudulent payments tied to COVID-19 relief programs.
According to Hawaii News Now, Cafirma filed weekly unemployment benefit certification forms from June 2020 through September 2021, falsely claiming she was not working or earning any income during that stretch. Those certifications are what unlocked the pandemic-era payments she is now accused of taking fraudulently. The same report notes that court documents allege she and her spouse filed false joint tax returns with the IRS that underreported their business income and total taxes owed for tax years 2016 through 2020.
Restitution and Cash Deposits Under Scrutiny
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports that Cafirma must pay $70,500 in restitution following her guilty plea to income-tax and COVID-19 assistance fraud. The newspaper's account also details a separate money laundering allegation: on three occasions in August 2018, Cafirma is accused of depositing under $10,000 in cash into two bank accounts, a pattern investigators flagged as structuring to avoid federal reporting requirements.
The 2025 guilty-plea coverage lists Cafirma as 50.
What the Original Charges Alleged
Court filings referenced in the Justice Department's earlier charging notice laid out the potential exposure Cafirma faced before her plea. Per a U.S. Department of Justice release, she had faced a maximum of three years in prison for each false-return count, 20 years for each wire-fraud count, 10 years for money laundering, and five years for illegal structuring if convicted on all counts as originally charged. Those figures reflect charging-stage maximums rather than any sentence that has since been imposed.
Other Hawaii Pandemic Fraud Cases
Cafirma's case joins a string of pandemic-relief fraud prosecutions across Hawaii in recent years. The Star-Advertiser notes that Christopher and Erin Mazzei were sentenced to 36 months and 27 months in federal prison, respectively, after being accused of defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program of more than $1.36 million in loan funds. In a far larger case, Martin Kao was sentenced to 87 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release for COVID-relief wire fraud, money laundering and bank fraud, and was ordered to pay and forfeit $12,841,490, according to the same outlet.
A separate case out of Kauai shows the pattern extending beyond unemployment fraud. The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that Kaiaulani C. Kaiawe, 47, of Kapaa, was sentenced to 40 months in prison for defrauding the Kauai Coronavirus Rental and Utility Assistance program.
Cafirma's sentencing was scheduled for April 15, 2026.
