The top deputy to former Milwaukee Attorney Tearman Spencer has been criminally charged, accused of falsifying financial disclosure forms by failing to disclose the ownership of his private law firm while representing the city.
The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office has charged attorney Odalo Ohiku, 46, with a Class A misdemeanor, which carries a maximum fine of $10,000 and nine months in prison. The indictment alleges that he “attempted to make an entry in a statement which he had intentionally falsified in a material respect.”
Ohiku did not respond to messages on Wednesday. His attorney, Nate Cade, declined to answer questions about the case.
An initial appearance is scheduled for July 24 before Judge Milton Childs Sr.
The three-page complaint stated that Ohiku owned Ohiku’s law firm the entire time he worked for the city attorney’s office, but that he failed to disclose this information in his annual statement of economic interest, which is required of top city officials city. The company employed several attorneys as employees, the complaint said.
The public relies on this data to determine whether a government official has a conflict of interest or other financial problems.
Ohiku earned $141,507 annually when he left office.
His private firm had a criminal defense practice, the complaint notes, meaning it could have handled cases critical of the Milwaukee Police Department, which city attorneys must defend against allegations of illegal conduct.
“The fact that someone is employed as a Deputy City Attorney for the City of Milwaukee and maintains a private law practice is in itself neither unethical nor illegal,” the complaint states. “However, the defendant did not disclose this conflict on his legally required declaration of economic interest.”
Not only did Ohiku fail to list his ownership of his private law practice, but he also failed to list the firm’s paying clients, the complaint said. This would have revealed whether there were “potential conflicts between who paid the defendant’s business money and who the city attorney was supposed to represent.”
In an interview with prosecutors, Ohiku acknowledged that he had completed his own financial statements from 2021 through 2023.
“Defendant stated that no one instructed him to omit his private law firm from the economic interest statements,” the complaint concludes.
Ohiku resigned earlier this year amid allegations that he did private legal work at taxpayer expense. At the time, he was under investigation by the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, which was investigating allegations of misconduct in public office, among several other violations.
He was also investigated by the city’s Ethics Board over whether he failed to disclose income from his private law practice while working for the city. But the board dropped the investigation when Ohiku resigned from his city job.
In his resignation letter, Ohiku said he left employment in the city for better work-life balance, salary or incentives and ‘Peace, Health, Love and Happiness’.
The investigations were launched after city Inspector General Ronda Kohlheim concluded that Ohiku was working on his law firm’s business while employed by the city and that he lied about that work on his time cards. These allegations are contained in a 57-page report.
Spencer called the report, in which Kohlheim also recommended that Spencer be charged, “ridiculous.” No charges have been filed against Spencer, according to online court records.
In April, Spencer lost his re-election bid to Rep. Evan Goyke after one term.
According to Kohlheim’s report, Ohiku worked an estimated 88 hours for clients of his personal law firm while working the city clock, causing the city to pay $5,766. Kohlheim said her estimate was conservative and could not take into account the hours he did not appear in court.
These issues are not addressed in the criminal complaint.
In 2020, the Journal Sentinel reported that Ohiku still had 45 pending cases in which he was the attorney for one of the parties, mostly criminal defendants. Just a month after taking office, Ohiku had been in court more than six times during the working day.
The Journal Sentinel reported in 2021 that Ohiku spent four consecutive days during work hours representing a 52-year-old Atlanta man accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl while they lived in South Milwaukee.
Kohlheim also concluded that Ohiku had not reported income from Ohiku Law Office in his declarations of economic interest, even though he did private work on municipal time.
Alison Dirr can be reached at adirr@jrn.com. Daniel Bice can be reached at daniel.bice@jrn.com.
This article originally appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Tearman Spencer’s deputy accused of failing to disclose private law firm
