A former Colorado County elections official was sentenced to nine years in prison for tampering with voting machines after the 2020 presidential election.

Tina Peters, a Republican, was convicted on most counts in the election interference case last August.

Peters, 68, helped breach Mesa County’s voting computer systems, allowing an unauthorized person to access voting machines and ballot materials.

It carried out the breach amid unfounded claims that mass voter fraud caused former President Donald Trump to lose the White House in the last presidential election.

State District Court Judge Matthew Barrett told Peters on Thursday: “You are not a hero.

“You are a charlatan who has used and continues to use your former position in office to sell a snake oil that has proven time and time again to be trash.”

He sentenced her to eight and a half years in the Colorado Department of Corrections and additional time in the Mesa County Detention Center.

Peters pleaded not guilty to all charges in 2022, but a jury convicted her on seven of the 10 counts.

These included three counts of attempting to influence a public official, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, dereliction of duty and failure to obey the Secretary of State.

“Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison for making dangerous attempts to break into her own voting equipment in order to prove Trump’s ‘Big Lie,'” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement. “We will not allow anyone to threaten our elections.”

The case marked the first time a local election official was prosecuted over a security beach in the 2020 election.

Peters became “fixated” on election issues after the presidential election, prosecutors said.

Investigators also issued a search warrant for MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a proponent of election fraud allegations, in connection with Peters’ case, the BBC’s U.S. partner CBS News reported.