CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Former Clay County Sheriff Miles “Mike” Slack was sentenced Thursday to spend the next two years on probation after illegally copying keystrokes on his then-wife’s computer.
Slack could have been sent to federal prison for up to five years by U.S. District Judge John Copenhaver but the judge opted for probation and a $1,000 fine.
U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin said after Slack’s September guilty plea that Slack wanted to monitor the chat room sessions and emails sent by his now ex-wife Lisa Slack. He also wanted her various passwords.
“It was information of a personal nature that his wife was communicating and he had installed this keystroke logger to find that information but as a result he captured even more information,” Goodwin said.
Lisa Slack’s job is at Clay County Magistrate Court so the logger picked up court information too. Goodwin said fortunately that information didn’t fall into the wrong hands.
“We don’t believe there was any data compromised. It was all limited to this storage device that was there installed on the computer,” he said.
Sheriff Slack placed the logger on the computer in April and it stayed there for about two weeks. He was remorseful at his September plea hearing.
Slack was Clay County chief deputy for approximately 16 years. He was elected sheriff in Nov. 2012 after soundly defeating two other Democrats in the May 2012 Primary Election. Slack got 78 percent of the vote. He had to resign his office as part of the plea bargain with federal prosecutors.