Ill. deputy kills self after corruption sting arrest

CHICAGO - A Cook County, Ill. sheriff's spokeswoman says an officer committed suicide in a federal lockup after he and his partner were arrested during a corruption sting.

Cook County sheriff spokeswoman Cara Smith says 45-year-old Stanley Kogut was found Tuesday hanging from a bed sheet in his cell in Chicago's federal Metropolitan Correctional Center. Kogut's partner, 44-year-old Robert Vaughan, later appeared in U.S. District Court on charges of conspiracy.

It wasn't immediately known if Vaughan has an attorney.

Smith says the officers were assigned to the federal High Intensity Drug Task Force. A federal complaint says they were arrested Monday in Bedford Park after allegedly ripping off an undercover FBI agent posing as a drug dealer.

Authorities say they took about 70 pounds of marijuana from an undercover FBI agent's vehicle.

Kogut was a member of the Cook County Sheriff's Department since 1977, according to Smith, who called his death "a tragedy on multiple levels."

Federal prosecutors allege Vaughan and Kogut and another man, 44-year-old Jimmy Rodgers, a former Lyons police officer, conspired to use their positions as cops to rob people of marijuana, contraband cigarettes and money, reports CBS Chicago.

Rodgers reportedly pleaded guilty to extortion earlier this year as part of a plea agreement in which he was sentenced to five years in prison.