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DENVER (KDVR) — A former Denver Sheriff Department deputy has been sentenced to 51 months in federal prison for allowing her apartment to be used for drug trafficking.

The Problem Solvers first reported on Sylvia Montoya, now known as Sylvia Dominguez, in 2019 after she was pulled over in March of that year by the Denver Police Department with convicted felon Timothy Spikes in the vehicle with her.

Spikes had served time in the Denver County Jail where Dominguez worked but she never told the department she was having an affair with him.

The city paid Dominguez $18,270.72 while she was on paid investigatory leave, finally putting her on unpaid leave when she was indicted by the U.S. Attorney in May of 2019.

Dominguez was eventually fired in August of 2019.

It wasn’t until December of 2021 that she pleaded guilty to maintaining a drug premise.

Investigators found cocaine, heroin, meth and digital scales inside her Lakewood apartment after she and Spikes were pulled over.

That same traffic stop also led to the discovery of a stolen handgun and drugs inside Dominguez’s car.

Spikes was sentenced in May to 118 months (nearly 10 years) at a federal prison after pleading guilty to drug possession and weapon charges.

At her sentencing Wednesday morning, Judge William Martinez said Dominguez had “betrayed the public’s trust” in giving her the maximum sentence under the sentencing guidelines of 41 to 51 months.

Dominguez had asked for two years probation and one year of home confinement. She told the judge, “I’ve hurt my family, my kids, my community. To the community I broke your trust as a public servant, this is something that cannot be repaired.”

Prosecutors pointed out that Dominguez was already in an intimate relationship with Spikes when she became a deputy in the spring of 2017 and made at least 15 requests between July and November of 2017 to work in the housing unit where Spikes was in custody.

Even once she was under an internal investigation for her relationship with Spikes, prosecutors pointed out she secured a $10,000 bond to get Spikes released from the Downtown Detention Center.

Dominguez claimed she had been manipulated by Spikes but the judge noted that she is 11 years older than Spikes and continued to assist him even after the pair had been stopped by police on two different occasions.

Dominguez was given until Sept. 9 to turn herself in to serve her sentence, which will be followed by two years of “supervised release.”