A 66-year-old Kona woman was indicted by a federal grand jury after she allegedly made more than $5.2 million selling “100% Kona coffee” that was actually sourced from South American beans bought in California and Washington.

Patricia Johnson, aka “Trish,” was charged in a 24-count indictment Sept. 25 with 16 counts of wire fraud, five counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specific unlawful activity and three counts of obstructing an official proceeding.

Kona coffee beans have to be grown in Kona, and if it is mixed with other beans, the percentage has to be accurately labeled and marketed.

Between October 2012 and April 2024, Johnson made millions by advertising, labeling and selling coffee “described as 100% Kona coffee when in fact Johnson knew that the coffee was not 100% Kona coffee,” according to the 26-page indictment.

The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking forfeiture of $5,260,095 from Johnson’s business.

Federal prosecutors also are asking that Johnson be held without bail until trial because she allegedly attempted to manipulate federal grand jury witnesses into altering their testimony to protect her.

Johnson was arrested in Kona by agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday and is in custody at the Federal Detention Center, Honolulu.

Her attorney, William A. Harrison, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that he was “very disappointed” Johnson was arrested after he had been in contact with federal prosecutors for more than a year.

Federal agents did not need to search her home in April 2024 in full tactical gear with automatic weapons drawn, he said.

“She would have walked herself into the courthouse,” Harrison said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca A. Perlmutter is prosecuting the case.

Federal agents seized more than $830,000 in cash after a series of April 2024 searches of Johnson’s business, home, storage units and four safe deposit boxes at Central Pacific Bank’s Kona branch.

Johnson’s Kona Coffee Cafe on Alii Drive opened in the 1990s and purportedly sold “100% Kona Coffee” in drinks, coffee beans, and chocolate-covered coffee beans.

Kona Coffee Cafe’s physical location is closed but its online business remains open, according to the company website.

She allegedly bought more than 194,000 pounds of green coffee beans, including 68,000 pounds of Peaberry beans, from wholesalers in Seattle and Oakland that she allegedly sold as pure Kona coffee.

Green coffee beans are dried, milled beans with all the parchment removed.

The beans were sourced from foreign countries including Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Papa New Guinea, Peru and Timor. None of the coffee beans Johnson sold were Kona coffee beans.

Federal prosecutors published alleged communications from March and April 2021 between Johnson and one of the wholesalers about buying 100 to 150 pound bags of coffee beans

Johnson allegedly discusses needing peaberry beans for her chocolate-covered coffee beans but is told the New Guinea peaberry beans she usually ordered were out.

“… But we do have Kenya PB (peaberry), however, I don’t think we are allowed to send African coffee to Hawaii … Is there something else you can use instead of Peaberry?,” asked the seller, identified as “Foreign Coffee Wholesaler 2” from Oakland in federal court documents.

Johnson explained she didn’t know anything about the regulations regarding shipping African coffee to Hawaii.

She “desperately” needed Peaberry.

“I was able to find 18 bags of Timor Peaberry for you, very similar to PNG (Papua New Guinea) and priced well at $2.69 a pound. Sound good?,” the wholesaler asked Johnson.

“OMG you’re the best. I want to make two separate wire transfers so they are not over the $10,000 and you have to fill out papers at the bank,” Johnson replied.

She allegedly changed the name of her account with the wholesaler from Kona Coffee Cafe to other names twice.

In September 2023 she allegedly added “person B” who was not associated with her business and had no idea, to the name of her account with the wholesaler. Johnson again changed the account to reflect the name of her clothing line.

Johnson bought more than 494,000 pounds of coffee beans from “Foreign Coffee Wholesaler 2,” according to federal court documents.

She allegedly used a shipping company in Utah for 12 years to conceal the shipments of foreign coffee to her business. Johnson allegedly instructed the company and others to avoid U.S. Department of Agriculture and state screening mechanisms.

She paid multiple people to roast the beans and some of those roasters suspected “the coffee was from a foreign source and not from Kona, based on the information on the coffee’s burlap sacks,” according to the indictment.

Johnson sold her coffee using labels that read “100% KONA COFFEE” from “KONA COFFEE CAFE” and told all the employees the stuff was pure. She said it was from a private farm at a high elevation in the Kona district that was not decimated by the coffee borer beetle.

She told her employees and customers that the farm and its owner, “Person A” in federal court records, were her supplier. “Person A” and their farm shut down in the 1980s, according to federal prosecutors.

On Nov. 6, 2023, an undercover law enforcement agent approached Johnson about buying a large amount of coffee. Johnson allegedly told the undercover that her coffee was 100 pure and she got it from “Person A“‘s farm.

Federal prosecutors also cited a 2012 interview Johnson gave to local media where she allegedly pushed her coffee’s fake origin story.

Johnson sold the fake coffee on Amazon and used PayPal to funnel money from the sales into her business accounts.

The state Department of the Attorney General investigated allegations that Johnson was “mislabeling” pure Kona coffee in 2019. In June of 2021, Johnson told state investigators that she bought coffee from the same farm and used the same roaster for 25 years.

The roaster denied doing business with Johnson and told investigators they had not roasted her coffee for decades.

When Kona Coffee Cafe employees quit and suggested they knew she was pushing fake products, she would allegedly send “harassing and threatening communications.”

After the April 2024 search of Johnson’s home and business, she changed the descriptions of the products on her website to indicate the coffee was blended.

The indictment included detailed descriptions of 16 wire transfers between Johnson and the Oakland wholesaler documenting coffee purchases in the hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars.

Five other transfers in excess of $10,000 from Johnson’s PayPal account to Kona Coffee Cafe’s business account are also documented to establish that she transacted funds gained from illegal activity.

Johnson also allegedly approached four witnesses that she knew were testifying before a federal grand jury and trying to get them to cover for her.

She allegedly instructed “person D” to plead the fifth, telling the individual “you can’t answer one question.”

Johnson also allegedly instructed the witness to tell the grand jury “some days we even hardly make any money” and to say they don’t remember a lot of stuff. She also allegedly tried to orchestrate grand jury witness through a scheme to put the blame on another individual, according to federal court records.

Federal agents searched Johnson’s Lewa Place home when in the “early morning hours of April 17, 2024, numerous government agents, in tactical gear and armed with what appeared to be automatic weapons, tossed a flash bang device onto the Johnson property, awakening the household, who were unaware of what was transpiring and believing they were under attack,” according to a May 13, 2024, motion by Johnson’s attorney, Harrison.

The motion sought to get $93,601.96 of Johnson’s businesses’ money back that was seized during the search. Federal agents also seized $746,431 in cash from Johnson’s safe deposit boxes.

“Thereafter the agents rushed onto the property and at gunpoint ordered Patricia Johnson, her husband and young grandson out of their home,” wrote Harrison, who noted Johnson was not immediately given a copy of the warrant.

Johnson is scheduled for an arraignment and plea in U.S. District court today .