A private investigator hired by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office to handle sensitive internal investigations previously worked for an organization designated as an anti-Muslim hate group and took part in the controversial Cyber Ninjas review of Arizona's 2020 election, according to a newly unsealed court report.

Phoenix New Times reported that the court-appointed monitor's 226-page report on the sheriff's office examined how AZ Truthfinder, a company founded by former Gilbert police officer Stephanie Ameiss, came to obtain a county contract worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The résumé Ameiss submitted as part of the bidding process omitted important aspects of her background, including six years of experience as lead investigator for Understanding the Threat, an organization founded by former FBI agent John Guandolo. The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled Understanding the Threat a hate group, describing it as an organization that promoted anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and offered training programs to law enforcement agencies. The group ceased operations in 2023.

According to the monitor's report, Understanding the Threat had published material that attacked Muslims, Black Lives Matter activists, Democrats, and others.

The report also states that Ameiss did not include her participation in the Cyber Ninjas-led investigation into Maricopa County's 2020 election results on her résumé. After Donald Trump lost Arizona in the 2020 presidential election, the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate engaged Cyber Ninjas to carry out the highly criticized review of the results — a months-long recount that ultimately reaffirmed Biden's victory.

AZ Truthfinder was one of three companies bidding for the contract, which covered internal investigations in situations where conflicts of interest prevented the sheriff's Professional Standards Bureau from handling the cases itself. The leadership of the sheriff's office selected the company less than 24 hours after reviewing the submitted bids, according to the report.

Axios reported that the company has received approximately $270,000 from Maricopa County since June 2025. The monitor doubted whether the sheriff's office had conducted a meaningful background check before awarding the contract. Either the "vetting process" was a sham, the report stated, or the vetting that was actually carried out had surfaced some of the same material the monitor had uncovered, "but they had chosen to ignore it."

The findings come as Sheriff Jerry Sheridan and Maricopa County attempt to end the years of federal court supervision that followed a racial-profiling lawsuit brought against the sheriff's office. In that, a federal judge found that the agency had unconstitutionally targeted Latino drivers, and the resulting court-ordered reforms have kept the department under outside monitoring for more than a decade. Chris Hegstrom, a spokesperson for the Sheriff's department, told Axios that the agency was reviewing the report and remained committed to "full and effective compliance" with the court's orders.

The monitor recommended that the circumstances surrounding the contract be referred for a possible misconduct investigation. How county officials respond to that referral — and how the report factors into the ongoing effort to end federal oversight — will be the immediate developments to watch.