BAZETTA TWP., Ohio - The Trumbull County Auditor's Office has been ordered to pay Bazetta Township more than $80,000 in tax receipts.

A ruling from Ohio's 11th District Court of Appeals states that the Auditor's Office must pay the township $80,857.18 plus interest in connection with taxpayer funds lost due to a cyber scam.

The scam happened after the Bazetta Township fiscal officer's email was compromised and a scammer sent an email to the Auditor's Office requesting more than $160,000 in taxpayer funds be transferred to a Green Dot Bank account.

Since then, about half of those funds were recovered, but the other half was still missing, prompting township trustees to demand the Auditor's Office pay that money back to them.

A court ruled in favor of the trustees, but Auditor Martha Yoder filed an appeal, arguing that the missing funds were not the Auditor's Office's fault and that the incident only happened bycause the fiscal officer did not implement a two-factor authentication system on her email account, leading to the hack.

However, the trustees argued that the Auditor's Office employee should have paid closer attention to the email and noticed some irregularities like misspellings that indicated that the email was fraudulent.

Ultimately, the appeals court ruled in favor of the trustees, stating Yoder's appeal was without merit.

Bazetta Township Fiscal Officer Stacy Marling said the township is very pleased with the outcome of this case.

"The county auditor serves as the financial watchdog for the county and its local entities, including the townships. Their main duty is to ensure that public funds are handled properly, transparently and according to the law. Simply put, the oversight was not there," Marling said.

Meanwhile, Yoder issued a statement of her own on the ruling.

"While I am disappointed and disagree with the ruling with regard to Bazetta Township made by the 11th District Court of Appeals, I will of course obey that ruling. I am currently consulting with legal counsel on how best to accomplish this," Yoder said.

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