FBI: Wade insists $30K he got from club operator not a bribe

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A former Milwaukee alderman who confessed to accepting $30,000 from the owner of a downtown strip club “didn’t see what he was doing as illegal,” according to records from the FBI.

The alderman, Willie Wade, was indicted in May on three counts of felony fraud by wire. Before his legal troubles, Wade had served as an alderman for Milwaukee’s seventh district for 13 years — from 2003 to 2016. He then worked as the CEO of Employ Milwaukee, a workforce-development organization from which he resigned in June.

According to court documents filed in late September, Wade took $30,000 from the operator of Silk Exotic in 2017 in exchange for a promise to persuade Alderman Khalif Rainey to vote in favor of a license allowing a new strip club to be opened in downtown Milwaukee. Wade said that, although he accepted the money, he never actually talked to Rainey about the vote.

FBI records say Wade insisted his actions amounted to running a “scam” rather than accepting a bribe because he never intended to give Rainey the money. He said he “had nothing to lose” if Rainey happened to vote in favor of the license.

The FBI learned about Wade’s motives following a staged arrest in March 2018. That ruse took place during a meeting between Wade and a confidential FBI informant in the parking lot of Pita Palace on West Layton Avenue in Milwaukee. After listening to their chat, six FBI agents pretended to arrest the informant. Wade was taken into the agents’ vehicle for voluntary questioning.

Documents from the FBI report say Wade agreed to talk and was asked about the $30,000 payment. After telling the agents several stories about his involvement with the money, Wade finally said he was trying to scam the strip-club operator, not take a bribe for Rainey. He said he took the money only because he wasn’t an alderman anymore and that he had never accepted anything similar during his time on the Common Council. Wade said the strip-club operator had never offered him gifts, food or lap dances while he was an alderman.

Court documents say Wade told the agents that the strip-club operator was pressuring him to take the money, and Wade said he didn’t see what he was doing as illegal.

Wade went on to tell the agents that he kept the money in a junk drawer in his basement. He said he spent most of the money on living expenses, a bathroom remodel at his rental property, concrete work at his house and rental property and travel expenses for his daughter to visit home from UW-Madison.

The FBI documents say the FBI agents asked Wade why they should believe him, and he answered, “You shouldn’t.”

The entire interview lasted more than two days; Wade spent a night in the Waukesha County jail. The FBI documents say Wade maintained that Rainey had no involvement in the scheme and said Rainey would confirm that statement if he were interviewed.

In the records of Wade’s conversation with the FBI agents, Wade said he had ended up “in this mess” merely because he was trying to help the strip-club owner, whom he called a friend. Wade also named Nick Anton, owner of the former La Perla Mexican restaurant in Walker’s Point, in his FBI interview. But the report says he denied that he had ever told Anton that he needed money for the vote on Silk Exotic’s downtown license.

Wade is pleading not guilty to the charges. Silk Exotic opened in downtown Milwaukee in 2018 after years of court battles. Its owner won nearly $500,000 in a lawsuit against the city in 2015.