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.^[7] 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.^[1]

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.^[8]

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.^[7]

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.^[8]

Columbus University diploma mill

While behind bars in the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina, O'Keefe became involved with a diploma mill operated via the Internet. This "Columbus University" was based in a duplex in the 8200 block of Hickory Street in New Orleans. The phantom school offered for approximately $3,000 to $4,000 diplomas, law degrees and even doctorates though according to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation the "university" had only one professor, a Dr. Mary Martin, who was also the registrar. The degrees were worthless because the institution was unaccredited in the Gulf states from which it claimed to have operating licenses.^[9]

At some point, O'Keefe was transferred from Butner to the minimum-security prison in Beaumont, Texas, much closer to New Orleans. O'Keefe was scheduled for release on April 29, 2016, three years earlier than called for in the original sentence.^[10]