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O'Donnell Pleads Not Guilty To Federal Charges Of Wire Fraud, Money Laundering

Nadya Faulx
/
KMUW/File photo

Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell pleaded not guilty Wednesday to 12 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering.

It was O’Donnell’s first appearance in Wichita's federal court since a grand jury indictment was unsealed last week with details of the allegations.

The county commissioner and former state senator is accused of taking money from his campaign accounts to pay his friends and himself, and then filing false expenditure reports with the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission.

A judge ordered O’Donnell released without supervision on a $5,000 bond, but he had to surrender his passport.

O’Donnell attended a commission meeting earlier in the day but did not comment on the pending charges.

Follow Nadya Faulx on Twitter @NadyaFaulx. To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.