By Jacqui Seibel
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
WAUKESHA, Wis. — A former jail guard was sentenced to three years probation today after she pleaded guilty to felony misconduct in office for getting caught in a web of relationships with federal inmates, some of whom were indicted in a sweeping crackdown by state, local and federal authorities on gangs and illegal drug trade in metro Milwaukee.
Former Waukesha County Corrections Officer Nanette Vorath, 38, of Milwaukee, was also accused in the criminal complaint of having a sexual relationship with one inmate, providing a prescription painkiller to another and smuggling documents to another.
Vorath told the court she accepts responsibility for her poor judgment. Her misuse of her authority is not representative of her 11-year work history with Waukesha County, she said. Vorath suffers from depression, which was triggered during a five-month period in which she lost her mother, father and her fiance’s father, she said.
She could have faced 3 1/2 years in prison, a penalty that Waukesha County Reserve Judge John Fiorenza imposed and stayed provided Vorath adheres to the conditions of her probation.
Fiorenza said had never seen a case like this and said Vorath put people’s lives at risk. He said he also considered her lack of a criminal record and her 6-year-old daughter when he sentenced her to probation.
Waukesha County Sheriff’s Capt. Karen Ruff told the court that she believes probation is a proper punishment but she didn’t think that Vorath was taking full responsibility for her actions.
“This was not a policy and rules violation, she literally jeopardized the lives of federal agents and correctional officers,” Ruff said.
Vorath was under investigation from October 2006 to April 2007, during which time agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation listened to and recorded 78 phone conversations she had with federal inmates.
Most of the calls were with Craig Nalls, who was a federal inmate in the Waukesha County Jail in 2006 until he was transferred to a federal penitentiary in West Virginia.
The complaint says Nalls and Vorath had sexual contact while he was at the jail and she later sent money to him in West Virginia under the name Nanette Nalls, the complaint says. Vorath is accused of bringing Tylenol 3 from home to federal inmate Courtney Turner, and warning federal inmate Michael Chachere of whom he shouldn’t talk to in the jail, the complaint says.
An agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation alerted Ruff in March 2007 of the relationship between the guard and the former inmate. Ruff began a criminal and internal investigation.
According to the complaint, authorities began investigating Vorath after federal inmate Julius Arberry told the FBI that Vorath had been providing special favors to another federal inmate, Johnny Murphy, including providing discovery materials related to Murphy’s court case. Under jail rules, Murphy was not entitled to have that material.
Federal court records show that Arberry and Murphy were among 17 people affiliated with a gang who were indicted in October 2006 on conspiracy and drug charges. The members of the gang, known as the First and Keefe Vice Lords, were accused by authorities of distributing cocaine, crack cocaine and marijuana on Milwaukee’s north side for about 15 years.
Copyright 2009 The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel