Big Island man sentenced to 4 months prison after filing false tax returns

A man from Hawai‘i Island was sentenced in federal court on Tuesday to four months in
federal prison followed by one year of supervised release for filing a false tax return and is ordered to pay more than a half a million dollars in restitution.

Douglas Mycko, 61, of Kurtistown, pleaded guilty in August 2025 to filing false tax returns for calendar years 2016 through 2020 in which he underreported his business income, resulting in losses to the federal government for $244,121 and to the State of Hawai‘i for $280,308.91, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Mycko was ordered to pay restitution totaling $561,587.91.

As part of his guilty plea, Mycko admitted that despite working and continuing to operate his business from 2020 through 2023, he applied for and obtained unemployment benefits through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program by making false and fraudulent representations regarding his unemployment status and absence of income. As a result of this fraudulent conduct, Mycko received $37,158 in funds that he was not entitled to receive.

On May 17, 2021, the Attorney General established the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to marshal the resources of the Department of Justice in partnership with agencies across government to enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud.

“The Task Force bolsters efforts to investigate and prosecute the most culpable domestic and international criminal actors and assists agencies tasked with administering relief programs to prevent fraud by, among other methods, augmenting and incorporating existing coordination mechanisms, identifying resources and techniques to uncover fraudulent actors and their schemes, and sharing and harnessing information and insights gained from prior enforcement efforts,” the release states.

For more information on the Department’s response to the pandemic, visit https://www.justice.gov/coronavirus.

Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud at 866-720-5721 or online at www.justice.gov/DisasterComplaintForm.