Fantasy Island, Aloha-Style

An $8.4 million investment scheme rocks Hawaii's upper crust

Ronald Rewald shuffled along the 26th-floor corridor of his former Honolulu office building one morning in early September, looking dazed and uncomfortable. No wonder. The once prominent "international investor" was manacled hand and foot and accompanied by two guards, who watched as he searched for records that bankruptcy officials might have overlooked. None could be found.

Until this summer there had been few hints of trouble in paradise. Over the past five years, Rewald, 41, had persuaded some 400 investors, many of them Hawaiian plutocrats and VIPS, to pour $13 million into his flimflam...

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