Michael Hanley O'Keefe Sr. (December 1, 1931 – January 31, 2021) was an American lawyer who served in the Louisiana State Senate for Orleans Parish from 1960 to 1983. He was later convicted of various crimes, and spent several years in prison.
Background
Reared in a Catholic family of Irish descent, O'Keefe is the grandson of Mayor Arthur J. O'Keefe Sr., of New Orleans, a businessman who served from 1926 to 1929, upon the death of Mayor Martin Behrman. O'Keefe's middle name is derived from his paternal great-grandmother, Sarah Hanley. His parents were Arthur Jr. (born 1901) and Eleonora O'Keefe. His father was a lawyer and a state senator from New Orleans for an abbreviated term from 1948 to 1950. The O'Keefes lived at 1204 St. Andrew Street in New Orleans. His older siblings include Arthur III (c. 1925-1996), an interior designer, Patrick Gordon O'Keefe (born c. 1927), a U.S. Navy submarine engineer, and Eleonora M. O'Keefe Ibert (born c. 1929), later of Fredericksburg, Virginia. In 1955, O'Keefe obtained his Juris Doctor degree from Loyola University in New Orleans.
O'Keefe was among the Louisiana delegation to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which was headed by Governor John McKeithen. Many of the biggest political names in the state party attended the convention, which nominated Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey to carry the banner against Richard M. Nixon, with a third choice, George Wallace, former governor of Alabama running as the American Independent Party nominee.
Criminal activities
Mail fraud and obstruction
In February 1983, O'Keefe was convicted of mail fraud and two counts of obstruction of justice in connection with his actions as a general partner in a New Orleans real estate concern. Forced from office, he was at the time the Senate President and was succeeded by Samuel B. Nunez, Jr., of Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish. O'Keefe was the first Senate president elected by his colleagues; prior to the Louisiana Constitution of 1974, the Senate President had automatically been the lieutenant governor, as it still is in most states.
As a result of the 1983 convictions, O'Keefe served 18 months in prison and a halfway house. The court determined that O'Keefe cheated business partners out of $900,000, used forged evidence, and implored a witness to lie about the matter.
Insurance liquidation
In a separate case in 1984, O'Keefe pleaded no contest in what prosecutors said was a scheme to obtain illegally $6 million in loans. In 1986, then-Governor Edwin Edwards, one of O'Keefe's closest political allies, pardoned O'Keefe so that he could seek to regain his legal license.
Disbarment
On December 7, 1984, the Louisiana Supreme Court had disbarred O'Keefe, retroactive to December 22, 1983. On April 7, 1989, the court granted O'Keefe's application for readmission to the bar. During the early 1990s, his O'Keefe, O'Keefe, & Bernstein law firm lost most of its business from the insurance industry and the New Orleans Housing Authority. O'Keefe became involved in a personal-injury practice in which he paid others to bring him clients, a violation of the judicial canon of ethics. In most of these cases, the clients never spoke to an attorney; they were referred to a physician selected by O'Keefe. As a result of these activities, O'Keefe was permanently disbarred.
Insurance theft
In 1999, O'Keefe was sentenced to 19.5 years in prison - his third conviction since 1983 - for stealing from a failed medical malpractice insurance company, an action which left hundreds of physicians without coverage. O'Keefe said that he and his co-defendants would attempt to pay $4.7 million in restitution by taking money from the liquidation of another company involved in the case. O'Keefe's share of the theft was set at $1.2 million owed to the Physicians National Risk Retention Group. From his prison cell, O'Keefe asked a U.S. district judge to halt the garnishment of his state pension for the repayment. O'Keefe co-defendants included his son-in-law, Eric Edwin Schmidt (born c. 1960), and businessman John O'Brien, both of New Orleans, and a third businessman, Gary Bennett of Cincinnati, Ohio. All were convicted in March 1996 of conspiracy, money laundering and mail and wire fraud. Their prison terms began in April 1999. Schmidt and O'Brien each received sentences of ten years and one month; Bennett, eight years. O'Keefe got the stiffest sentence because he had pleaded no contest in the case, and it was his third federal conviction.