A former Salvation Army official pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges that he bilked three Hawai'i residents of about $141,000 and received more than $10,000 from the charity based on bogus work-related mileage claims.

Timothy Janusz, who is being held on more than $5 million bail, was indicted by the O'ahu grand jury on the charges last Tuesday.

He is accused of stealing about $127,000 from a 71-year-old Big Island man, $12,000 from an 86-year-old Honolulu woman and $2,000 from a 75-year-old Honolulu woman. In addition, he stole more than $10,000 from the Salvation Army by submitting phony mileage claims, according to the charges.

Janusz was previously indicted in April on charges of stealing $150,000 that a 77-year-old man wanted to give to the charity. Janusz pleaded not guilty to those charges.

When the offenses allegedly occurred, Janusz was the Salvation Army's director of planned giving. He was fired when the allegations of wrongdoing surfaced earlier this year.

City Deputy Prosecutor Christopher Van Marter said he will ask that the two cases be consolidated. The trial is tentatively set for November.

The Salvation Army was rocked by the allegations that the man they hired in 2003 had a 1996 fraud conviction in Colorado for bilking an elderly couple. Janusz also faces a pending federal charge of escaping in 1998 from a federal prison camp in South Dakota where he was serving a five-year sentence for the Colorado conviction.

When the fraud allegations first surfaced in April, David Hudson, the Salvation Army official in charge of the organization's Hawai'i activities, said he had not known about Janusz's criminal history.

Since then, the organization has revamped its procedures to call for criminal background checks, not only for employees who deal with youths, but also those who come in contact with the public in general.