Milwaukee police executed a search warrant on a home in the city on August 13, and what they say they found inside has upended the office of the Milwaukee County Clerk of Circuit Court. A senior administrator who worked as a top deputy in that office was arrested, and county officials confirmed she has been suspended from her job pending the outcome of an investigation.
The employee has been identified by local outlet The Heartland Post as Samotria Matthews, who serves as senior administrator in the Clerk of Circuit Court Administrative Office, a top non-elected leadership post under Clerk of Circuit Courts Anna Hodges. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, officers searching the property recovered 1,280 grams of fentanyl and 167.2 grams of cocaine, along with an additional mixture of fentanyl and cocaine weighing about 431.6 grams. The home searched is owned by the county employee, per property records cited in the search warrant.
Investigators also reported finding hydraulic brick presses, drug processing equipment, clear plastic bags, a cutting agent and a gun inside the property, all per the search warrant. The search warrant does not indicate whether the county employee was aware of or actively involved in the drugs found at the residence, the newspaper's report notes.
A Household Already Under Legal Scrutiny
The case does not begin with the August 13 search. The employee's spouse was already on active supervision at the time, according to the search warrant, and had fled police during an incident on March 6. That spouse was arrested on August 11, two days before the search of the home, after a police chase, the same account states. Charges against the employee and two family members remain under review, the Journal Sentinel reports.
Anna Hodges, the elected Clerk of Circuit Courts, confirmed that the employee has been suspended and said the staffer held an appointive position within her office. Hodges said the employee was in custody in connection with an investigation unrelated to her official duties. Milwaukee County has suspended the employee until further notice, and spokespeople for the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office told the paper that charges against the worker are under review.
A Decade on the County Payroll
County payroll records show the employee has worked for Milwaukee County for over a decade, and made roughly $92,000 working for the county in 2023, per those records. The Heartland Post additionally reported that Matthews had retired from Milwaukee County on July 1, 2022, collecting a monthly pension of $2,608.65 along with a $53,775 backdrop payout, before returning to county employment in the senior court administrative role.
What Wisconsin Law Says About the Quantities Involved
The amounts described in the search warrant far exceed the thresholds that trigger Wisconsin's most serious drug felony charges. Under Wisconsin Statute § 961.41(1m)(dm), possessing with intent to deliver or manufacture more than 50 grams of fentanyl is a Class C felony carrying up to 40 years in state prison and fines up to $100,000, according to Kirk Obear & Associates. Separately, under Wisconsin Statute § 961.41(1m)(cm)4, possession with intent to distribute more than 40 grams of cocaine also carries a Class C felony designation punishable by up to 40 years imprisonment, per FindLaw.
The presence of hydraulic presses and cutting agents inside the home also raises the possibility of liability tied to property ownership. Wisconsin Statute § 961.42 makes knowingly keeping or maintaining a drug trafficking place a Class I felony punishable by up to 3.5 years in prison, according to Grieve Law. It remains an open question, per the search warrant, whether prosecutors will pursue that theory against the homeowner directly or focus their case on the spouse who was already under active supervision.
A Seizure Amid Falling Overdose Numbers
The scale of the seizure lands at a moment when Milwaukee County has reported meaningful progress against fatal drug overdoses. County Executive David Crowley announced in April that total fatal drug overdoses in the county fell to 387 in 2025, including 249 fatal opioid overdoses, a 17.7% annual decline and a 42.6% reduction since 2022, according to WisPolitics. Separate public health data analyzed in April found the county's 383 opioid overdose deaths in 2025 marked its lowest annual opioid mortality total in a decade.
Large-scale drug enforcement actions have continued alongside those declining death tolls. In April, federal prosecutors and the Drug Enforcement Administration's Milwaukee District Office secured a 22-year federal prison sentence for a cartel-linked operative convicted of distributing over 400 grams of fentanyl across the Milwaukee area. A separate multi-agency crackdown led by the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation in January 2025 resulted in criminal charges against 19 people accused of trafficking fentanyl, heroin and cocaine in the greater Milwaukee area.
Milwaukee has seen other major residential drug seizures in recent years, including a prior search warrant operation that turned up a large drug cache and firearms. For now, the case against the suspended court administrator, her spouse and a third family member remains under review by the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office, with no charges yet filed as of the Journal Sentinel's reporting.
