The employee was paid not to work for years as officials mulled over his “impossible” mileage reports. He stopped receiving a city paycheck a few weeks after a Civil Beat story.

A Honolulu county worker who was on paid leave for nearly five years while a misconduct investigation dragged on was fired this month following public outrage about his case.

Brandon Kaaa-Swain, an investigator in the Honolulu Prosecutor’s Office, was put on paid leave in October 2020. He was accused of filing false mileage reimbursements totaling approximately $12,000.

Over the course of an investigation that apparently took 1,751 days, he received even more than he was accused of stealing. His taxpayer-funded paychecks during his leave total over $300,000, city data shows, and his pay scale increased at least

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