Official quit amid investigation into fraud, sexual encounters
A Denver County Court manager resigned last year while facing an internal investigation over the misuse of court money, fraud and inappropriate workplace behavior in an incident that some employees now say undermined their confidence in the court’s human resources process.
Alice Ehr, a 14-year employee of Denver County Court, resigned from her position as court interpreter administrator after an internal disciplinary investigation found evidence that she spent at least $25,000 of the court’s money to hire contractors to do her job — sometimes on days she worked second jobs, conducted personal business or left work to have sexual encounters, according to a disciplinary letter obtained by The Denver Post.
The disciplinary investigation found evidence of “multiple examples of time and monetary fraud,” including that Ehr abused vacation time and remote work and allowed a subordinate to do the same; sent sexually explicit emails from her work account; and left the office during the workday on several occasions to meet the person she was emailing for sex, according to the letter.
Ehr on Monday said the allegations against her were false, that emails were taken out of context and that she had permission from her supervisor to hire the contractors. She left the job because the stress of the investigation was taking a toll on her health, she said.
“I was told, ‘OK, the investigation is over if you leave,’” she said. “I was like, ‘OK, perfect. Good.”
The court’s investigation into Ehr did end with her departure.
Denver County Court Executive Kristin Wood accepted Ehr’s resignation in April as officials were preparing to fire Ehr, county court spokeswoman Carolyn Tyler said in a statement Monday. County court officials did not refer the case to Denver police for a criminal investigation, and Ehr’s alleged misconduct was not publicly addressed with county court employees after she left.
Ehr sought to change her resignation to a retirement five days later, a move that could make her eligible to receive retirement benefits. Julie Vlier, spokeswoman for the Denver Employees Retirement Plan, would not confirm whether Ehr is receiving those benefits, citing city privacy rules.
The Denver County Court is run by the City and County of Denver and is separate from the Colorado Judicial Department, which operates the state’s district courts.
The supervisor’s quiet departure served as confirmation for some of her employees that the court’s human resources process couldn’t be trusted, said four court interpreters who spoke with The Post on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional retaliation.
Each said Ehr’s misconduct went beyond what was detailed in the disciplinary letter, and said she discussed her sex life with them — her subordinates — in graphic detail on a neardaily basis at work, sometimes showing them pornographic images during the conversations. The Post reviewed several text exchanges in which Ehr discussed sex during the workday, including one exchange in which Ehr shared a pornographic image with a subordinate.
“If you didn’t play along, her mood would change drastically,” one interpreter said. “Her voice would change, her face, her eyebrows would raise. The abuse of power was incredible.”
The interpreters did not previously speak up about the conversations because they did not believe court leaders would take appropriate action and worried they would face retaliation, they said. Many interpreters work on a freelance basis and felt Ehr, who was well-liked and influential in the interpreting community, could use her professional influence to block them from interpreting jobs statewide. Ehr’s resignation cemented those concerns, they said. She now works as a freelance interpreter herself.
“What happened in Denver County Court — it makes me lose trust in the system,” one interpreter said.
“I blame her supervisors,” said another. “I blame the administration. Like, where were they when all of this was happening?”
Allegations of misconduct
The internal investigation into Ehr started in early 2023 when someone submitted an anonymous complaint to the Denver Board of Ethics alleging Ehr was working second jobs while on the clock, among other misconduct.
A subsequent investigation by Denver County
Court’s human resources department found evidence for eight separate misconduct issues, according to the disciplinary letter. Denver County Court denied The Post’s open records request for the letter, but the newspaper obtained it through other means.
The most serious of the eight allegations was the accusation that Ehr hired contract interpreters to “dispatch” interpreters in Denver County Court. The person dispatching sends interpreters to various courtrooms as needed throughout the day.
Dispatching is a “primary function” of Ehr’s job, according to the disciplinary letter. Yet Denver County Court spent more than $25,000 in 2022 alone to pay contract interpreters to do dispatching, the letter says, noting that Denver County Court “may have paid significantly more than $25,000” for such work.
The internal investigation found Ehr hired contractors at the same dates and times she left work to engage in a sexual affair with “an individual outside of (Denver County Court),” the letter says.
Ehr on Monday said she hired the contractors during the COVID-19 pandemic so that she could go and personally interpret in courtrooms.
“The judges really wanted in-person interpreters and no one was willing to come in person,” she said. “… So I hired someone to work for me to dispatch me into the courtrooms because I was the only one willing to go in person. So that was a creative solution, until they decided to tell me it wasn’t a good idea.”