WARREN, Ohio - Trumbull County Auditor Martha Yoder has appealed a judge's ruling in a case involving lost tax revenue for Bazetta Township.

Back in April of 2025, Trumbull County Judge Sarah Kovoor had ordered Yoder to pay the township $80,000 in tax receipts. Following this ruling, Yoder had told 21 News she believed the court had erred and was exploring legal options.

Now, Yoder has filed an appeal to Judge Kovoor's ruling adding that she will be funding this appeal herself.

"I spoke with attorney [William] Danso with the Prosecutor's Office about the legality and logistics of personally funding the appeal. In preparation, I also liquidated some assets in order to have the funds on hand," Yoder said.

Yoder added she had paid to file the appeal last week and has written a check as a donation to be used as reimbursement for this payment. Yoder says a formal request to accept this donation is on the agenda for the upcoming Trumbull County Commissioners meeting.

The case was opened after the Bazetta Township Trustees voted unanimously to sue Yoder in connection with funds that went missing in September of 2024 after an employee at the Auditor's Office fell victim to a phishing scam.

The scam in question involved a fraudster hacking into a Bazetta Township official's email account and sending an email to the Auditor's Office notifying them of a supposed bank account change and asked that more than $80,000 in taxpayer funds be transferred to the new account.

However, the township did not actually have a new bank account.

Yoder had previously asserted that the reason this happened was that the township employee did not have a two-factor authentication process in place, which allowed the fraudster to access her email.

However, the township argued that the Auditor's Office employee should have paid closer attention to the email and noticed oddities such as misspellings that would have indicated that the email was fraudulent.

You can read much more about this case in our related coverage below.

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