CLEVELAND, OH – Interim East Cleveland Mayor Sandra Morgan has enforced one of the two resolutions city council enacted on January 26, 2023, and removed Beachwood resident and ex-vendor attorney Willa Mae Hemmons from discharging any duties as the city’s director of law she’s been impersonating since the resolutions were enacted. Hemmons’ last day was Monday, March 31, 2025.
The lock to the law director’s office was ordered to be secured by Morgan two years and two months after Hemmons was officially fired by a resolution of council on January 26, 2023. A city hall source said the office Hemmons worked in was ordered to be secured by federal law enforcement officials. The source said Hemmons had tried and was unsuccessful in entering her former office after city officials were ordered to secure it.
The office Hemmons formerly occupied, that federal law enforcement agents wanted secured, stores among other documents, fake legislation she created and transmitted to government agencies with the names of non-existent city officials. It should also contain documents relevant to indicted ex-chief of staff Michael Smedley, Zubair Mehmet Abdur Razzaq Al Zubair and his brother Muzzammil Muhammad Al Zubair’s federal indictments.
Hemmons and attorney Heather McCollough participated in a signing ceremony in the mayor’s office that resulted in a Chinese investor releasing $9 million to the brothers. The mayor’s office signing ceremony was coordinated by King, Michael Smedley and Hemmons to help the Al Zubair brothers sell their lie to two foreign investors that they had site control over General Electric’s former Nela Park after it was purchased by Phoenix Investments.
The indictment identifies various ways King, Smedley and Hemmons misused their elected and appointed public offices to help the Al Zubair brothers execute a $10 million theft of funds for a “cut” of the proceeds.
Willa Hemmons continued to talk to King after his suspension
Four days after her termination, Hemmons was seen by a resident who knows her leaving indicted and suspended Mayor Brandon King’s family office building on April 4, 2025. It is at that building where King has stored the city’s finance records in an unlawful lease with his own business for $8000 a year.
Council had no knowledge of the lease or King’s current possession of city records that could serve as undisclosed evidence of even more of his crimes in office in the building Hemmons visited. Morgan should send police to immediately retrieve the city’s records from what should be a public office associated with a public lease to King’s building. No warrant needed. If the lease was lawful as King is claiming, the city should have 24-hour access to the office with keys in the police department.
City hall sources say Hemmons continued to communicate with and take instructions from King and his and Smedley’s shared attorney, vendor Charles Tyler, even after the Supreme Court of Ohio suspended him. She was overheard speaking to them in a conference call others could hear.
A city hall insider said King advised Hemmons after his suspension to assume the mayor’s office so she and Smedley could retain control of the city’s finances and records. King told Hemmons to act when Council President Lateek Shabazz chose not to assume the authority of acting mayor before Cuyahoga County Probate Court Judge Anthony Russo appointed Morgan as interim mayor.
Hemmons, a Beachwood elector, even submitted her own application to serve as interim mayor knowing the elected office is reserved for qualified electors of East Cleveland. It was Hemmons who decided not to immediately strip King of his keys, the city assigned vehicle and bank account access. She decided Smedley would be on paid leave after his indictment. Morgan cancelled it.
Before her termination, Hemmons was trying to schedule another of her unlawful “records retention commission” meetings to identify more records for destruction to destroy King’s paper trail of crimes. Instead of scheduling the meetings, lawfully, through the clerk of council, Hemmons and King scheduled their own meetings and executed their routine destruction of public records without reporting which records they wanted to destroy to council.
Councilors Dr. Patricia Blochowiak and Twon Billings are still waiting for Morgan to enforce the second resolution that removed McCollough from office on the same day as Hemmons on January 26, 2023. They’re encouraging her to clean house. Current Clerk of Council Mansell Baker said Hemmons bypassed him to try and schedule the records retention commission meeting. The clerk of council is the only official authorized to post and disseminate the notices of “all” boards and commissions. It includes all meetings of East Cleveland’s Civil Service Commission.
Hemmons’ deceptively illegal efforts to destroy records associated with the King administration’s crimes in office, in the middle of his and Smedley’s criminal trials, has the city currently involved in a lawsuit with Shredit and Chasing Justice founder Mariah Crenshaw. Instead of defending the city’s interests against ex-finance director Charles Iyahen’s unlawful contract with Shredit to destroy finance records every month, Hemmons entered an appearance on behalf of Shredit against the city without the corporation’s permission or council’s knowledge. It is obvious from the legal entanglements in which Hemmons involved the city that she operated as King’s protective personal attorney in exchange for his keeping her, illegally, on the payroll since her contract expired on January 4, 2017.
Hemmons and Heather McCollough were thieves on East Cleveland’s payroll
Over two years ago, council vacated the offices of director of law and deputy director of law by resolutions numbered 10-23 and 11-23 and removed Hemmons and McCollough from office. For fiscal years 2023 and 2024 the council voted for budgets that did not include wages for either attorney, or contract fees for outside attorneys and law firms. The two law enforcement officer impersonators should have left but refused.
In each of the past two years, every utterance Hemmons and McCollough made before judges, that they were authorized officials of the city, was false. Every appearance, every settlement and every criminal or civil prosecution they engaged in was without authority. Every check they received for wages or so-called contract fees is evidence of theft, fraud and deception.
Hemmons called herself a “vendor” who never submitted itemized weekly invoices of her work in exchange for her bi-weekly pay. Vendors are not “public employees” the city pays Ohio Public Employee Retirement System (OPERS) benefits, gives healthcare benefits or pays for vacations and sick time. McCollough’s accrued OPERS contributions for the past two years were unlawful, and the retirement funds should be returned to the city.
With these facts federal prosecutors will see every day McCollough continues to impersonate the city’s prosecuting attorney as daily violations of 18 U.S.C. 241 and 242. It’s clear McCollough knows she’s a malicious prosecutor when she conspires and deprives citizens of constitutional rights with false criminal charges and asks them to sign unconstitutional “rights waivers” in exchange for a dismissal.
Attorneys Hemmons, McCollough, Charles Tyler, Don McTigue, Timothy Kucharski, Brian Bardwell and the law firms of Clemons Nelson and others were not authorized by council to receive a dime in 2023 and 2024. Instead of obeying council’s two terminating resolutions and approved annual appropriations, Hemmons and McCollough continued to receive stolen wages and benefits that were not appropriated for them as they impersonated the city’s director of law and prosecuting attorney. Hemmons conspired with King to continue unlawfully directing public funds to pay the attorneys legally supporting his organized criminal enterprise.
A crazed Hemmons went further in her impersonations of both the city’s clerk of council and acting mayor all while claiming to be a contract law director as a Beachwood resident. Mayors must be electors of a municipal corporation, and vendors have no authority to enter an elected office. Each public office she assumed without legal authority, including that of law director, was evidence of Hemmons committing criminal acts as a deranged and out of control vendor operating without a contract from an unbudgeted position and in violation of an ordinance of council.
When Hemmons dually impersonated the clerk of council and the law director, it was before the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections during a February 13, 2023 hearing, 18 days after her termination. Hemmons was asking elections board members to validate recall petitions she called herself certifying as the clerk of council that targeted three of the councilors who voted her out of the law director’s job; Juanita Gowdy, Korean Stevenson and Dr. Patricia Blochowiak. Board members rejected her unhinged claims and considered referring Hemmons for criminal prosecution. Her impersonations were before an assistant county prosecuting attorney.
The only valid contract council approved for Hemmons was dated December 27, 2014 for two years. Her term began on January 5, 2015 and ended on January 5, 2017 without renewal.
In what appears to be a quid pro quo relationship Hemmons and McCollough entered with King, the indicted and suspended mayor continued to divert unbudgeted public funds to pay the two attorney recipients of stolen public property. With both Hemmons and McCollough as willing co-conspirators, King weaponized the city’s law department against the council and its clerk of council to engage in further unobstructed stealing with his indicted and unbudgeted chief of staff, Smedley, and the no bid vendors he was feeding. After council terminated her on January 26, 2023, Hemmons continued to widely-disseminate email, write legal opinions and appeared in court as if she was still authorized to work and the resolutions didn’t matter.
McCollough’s presence is deeply as troubling because she’s created more than two years’ worth of potential civil rights liabilities against the city’s taxpayers by continuing to impersonate a prosecuting attorney after she was terminated by council. At all times after council enacted Res. No. 11-23 on January 26, 2023, McCollough should have left city hall and ceased appearing before Dawson and holding herself out to criminal defendants as the city’s prosecuting attorney. Every defendant McCollough criminally prosecuted has a right to challenge the authenticity of their arrests and prosecutions.
Hemmons has admitted in more than one publicly distributed email that she violated laws and ordinances to make recklessly irresponsible legal decisions, which added millions to the city’s nearly $100 million deficit as a vendor.
Lawyers supported King administration’s organized crimes
When council filed a criminal complaint against King and ex-finance director Charles Iyahen on April 6, 2023, Hemmons asked Judge William Dawson not to charge them for continuing the mayor’s unapproved and illegal lease of his space in his family’s office building to the city. He buried that complaint and others and took no action to review the felony offenses they identified. Neither did McCollough like she did with other criminal complaints involving King, Hemmons, Iyahen and herself. Council’s April 6, 2023 criminal complaint asked Dawson to review the same allegations the Ohio Ethics Commission gave the Cuyahoga County Grand Jury to cause King’s October 10, 2024 indictment.
Five months later, after learning that Iyahen was married to Dawson’s Clerk of Court, Wendy Howard, Hemmons was calling the ex-finance director a thief for giving his wife a pay raise to $107,000 when Dawson had approved $64,500. Howard had filed a claim against the city to be compensated for unused vacation and sick time at the $107,000 rate her husband paid her instead of the $64,500 Dawson authorized. Hemmons then called herself representing Dawson against Howard and her ex-finance director husband, Iyahen, when she contradicted her earlier obstruction of council’s request for his criminal prosecution.
For five years, when the two started dating in 2018, and before their August 2022 Las Vegas marriage, Howard did not deliver the court’s monthly collection of fees and fines to Iyahen as required by law. The unconfirmed estimate of unreported court funds was estimated at $1.3 million. Iyahen never reported the missing court money to council, auditors, the financial planning and supervision commission or the public in any of his monthly reports for five years. His April 10, 2023 resignation after council’s April 6, 2023 criminal complaint against was almost immediate. This is who Hemmons defended when she ignorantly interrupted council’s news conference with WKYC to discredit charges against an official she knew was stealing.
Though council’s criminal complaint against King and Iyahen identified the same crimes in King’s indictment, Hemmons knew she had written unauthorized legal opinions council had never approved as the city’s official position to ratify King doing business with his own businesses without council’s knowledge or approval.
It is the acts like those described above that makes Hemmons a witness in King’s upcoming criminal trial. When King and ex-Councilman Ernest Smith were indicted on October 10, 2024, Hemmons entered an appearance as Smith’s attorney and defended King in a motion to dismiss the charges against them both. It didn’t matter that their crimes were against the city a law director was supposed to protect from their crimes in office.
Hemmons was immediately forced to withdraw as Smith’s attorney when her status as a testifying witness was confirmed by prosecutors. With Hemmons out of city hall, Morgan has eliminated a major player in King’s organized crime family.
