WARREN, Ohio, (WKBN) — Trumbull County Auditor Martha Yoder is appealing a county judge’s decision that her office pay Bazetta Township over $80,000 it lost when the township’s tax fund was mistakenly deposited into a fraudulent bank account.
Yoder filed an appeal late last week in the 11th District Court of Appeals, taking issue with Judge Sarah Thomas Kovoor’s decision. A notice of appeal was filed, but briefs stating Yoder’s claim have not been filed yet on the public docket.
Bazetta Township trustees were quick to respond to the appeal and posted the following message on the township’s Facebook page:
We regret to inform our hard-working, tax-paying residents of Bazetta Township the Trumbull County Auditor, Martha Yoder has filed an Appeal to the 11th District Court of Appeals from the law suit we filed and were awarded by the Trumbull County Court of Common Pleas.
To date, we have been forced to spend $11,191.00 to recover your tax dollars she (Yoder) is statutorily required to deposit to Bazetta Township. Unfortunately, this process could drag out from six months to a year and will cost the taxpayers of our township and county even more money in legal fees.
Bazetta Township
The ruling follows a cyberattack in August 2024, when hackers infiltrated the township’s fiscal officer’s email and posed as officials to redirect where the township’s tax revenue should be sent. The auditor’s office failed to verify the request and sent the money to a fraudulent account at Green Dot Bank.
Yoder previously stated that the township’s fiscal officer admitted to asking for the multifactor authentication (MFA) to be turned off for the email account. MFA is an electronic authentication
security method that allows access to an application only after a user successfully presents two or more pieces of evidence to authenticate identity.
The amount ordered to be repaid was $80,857.19.
Nadine Grimley and Lindsey Watson contributed to this report.
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