HONOLULU -- A former city liquor investigator whose testimony led to the federal bribery indictments of eight fellow investigators said they were "greedy, selfish and arrogant." Charles Wiggins told KITV 4 News the investigators blatantly solicited and accepted thousands of dollars in bribes, "thinking they would never get caught."

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Wiggins, 47, was an undercover witness for the FBI, and wore a tiny tape recorder and transmitter for three months from October 2000 to January 2001, while collecting evidence of corruption by his co-workers.

In May of 2002, a federal grand jury indicted almost the entire night shift of liquor investigators based on his testimony. Five of the investigators have pleaded guilty to extortion and racketeering charges. Three others -- including two supervisors -- face federal trials in the spring. Wiggins is expected to be the prosecution’s key witness in the cases.

The federal government helped move him to the mainland, while he waits to testify. "He was physically threatened. His life was in danger," said his lawyer Andy Winer.

Wiggins was a Honolulu Police Department officer for nine years before he joined the Liquor Commission as an investigator in 1994, and he soon noticed that "the climate for corruption was perfect."

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"The bars pretty much treated us like gods. They feared us," he said.

To invite bribes, Wiggins said investigators would discover simple violations like improperly filled-out time cards by bar employees and then notify the bar owner, often referred to as a "mama."

"And you say, 'Mama, come look. And you have 25 time cards that are filled out incorrectly. Oh, each one of those $250 fine.' You do the math. Because that's what the mama's going to do. She's gonna do the math. And the next thing you're going to get the white envelope and you overlook that violation." The "white envelope" was filled with cash bribes, according to Wiggins.

While he was working undercover for the FBI, taking bribes along with other investigators, he recalled that: "On any given night I might have gone home with $1,000 or $1,500 cash." Other nights, he remembered receiving $400 to $500 in bribes from bar owners and managers.

Before he started cooperating in the FBI investigation, he found some of his co-workers collected bribes on his behalf: "I would go to bars and the bar owners would kind of look at me like: 'What are you doing here? Did you get the money?' And so people were accepting money in my name, even though I wasn't taking it or didn't realize that."

Wiggins said the focus of his fellow investigators work each night was not stopping underage drinking or illegal sex acts in bars. Instead, "Our goal was: Where are we gonna get money tonight? Who's paying and who's not paying? Who we gonna go shake down," he said.

An FBI agent and police officer followed him each night and eavesdropped on his bugged conversations by transmitter, according to Wiggins. And the officers recorded each bribe he accepted during the investigation, cataloging the cash and envelopes for evidence in the federal bribery case.

This fall, the city paid Wiggins $387,500 to settle a federal whistle-blower lawsuit. He filed suit against the city, Liquor Commission Administrator Wally Weatherwax and eight investigators, claiming they violated his civil rights by retaliating and discriminating against him for cooperating in the federal investigation.

"This is somebody who risked his job, he risked his life, he risked his family in order to expose some serious wrongdoing at the Liquor Commission," Winer said.

In January, the city paid him $43,000 in workers compensation claims, after the city initially denied paying them to him. Winer said the city’s treatment of his client was "outrageous," because he was "denied his right to any kind of workers compensation benefits to pay for mental health counseling and things that happened as a direct result of the abuse that he was taking at the workplace."

In November, a KITV 4 News investigation found lawsuits and investigations into corruption, unethical behavior and sexual harassment cost the Honolulu Liquor Commission more than $580,000 in the last three years, or roughly 20 percent of its annual operating budget. A majority of that money, $370,500, was paid to Wiggins to settle his whistle-blower lawsuit.

The KITV 4 News probe also found Oahu bars and nightclubs have gone without inspections on Sunday and Monday nights because of staffing shortages, for at least the last year. The commission has been unable to collect at least $375,000 in overdue fines from liquor establishments since 1990 because, unlike Maui County, Honolulu does not require deposits or personal guarantees of bar and club owners. Maui reports no unpaid fines in the last year, while Honolulu’s uncollected fines totaled $33,750, or 10 percent of its annual fines.

In October, the Honolulu City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for an audit of the liquor commission. City Auditor Leslie Tanaka said the earliest his office could begin such an audit would be in March. The commission has not undergone a management audit since 1989.