BAZETTA — Township trustees at a special meeting Saturday authorized the township’s legal counsel to bring suit against Trumbull County Auditor Martha Yoder for what they say is her failure to comply with her statutory duties.

Yoder in a previous statement defended her office’s role in the transfer of $160,857 in township funds to a fraudulent bank account, blaming Bazetta’s disabled security protocols for the breach.

Trustees previously said they planned to pursue legal action against Yoder’s office to recover the remaining funds.

Bazetta Trustee Chairman Mike Hovis said that the auditor failed to follow state-mandated protocols.

“The auditor won’t pay us and we need the money,” Hovis said.

Through their attorney, Cherry Poteet, trustees seek a writ of mandamus or other order requiring the auditor to distribute the real estate taxes due to the township.

Trustees said residents of the township have made their real estate payments, but the auditor failed to pay the real estate taxes collected from the residents in August in violation of statutory duties and instead deposited the money into a fraudulent account.

Yoder previously said the fraud could have been prevented if the township’s fiscal officer, Stacy Marling, had not disabled multi-factor authentication on her Microsoft Office 365 account. Yoder said the lack of MFA allowed hackers to access financial records undetected for nearly three weeks.

However, Hovis said the situation happened because Yoder’s office transferred taxpayer money to a fraudulent online-only bank without proper verification. He referenced the Ohio Auditor’s Bulletin 2024-003, which requires in-person or phone verification of bank change requests.

“The loss did not occur because of a lack of multifactor authentication but because Auditor Yoder’s office failed to verify the legitimacy of a bank change request received by email,” Hovis said last month.

The incident, which occurred between August and September, resulted in township funds being transferred to a Green Dot Bank account posing as Bazetta Township.

Yoder defended her office’s actions, saying the emails appeared to come from Marling’s compromised account. She noted that half the stolen funds were recovered after Marling questioned why the township had not received its tax payment.

“This fraud would not have occurred if they had maintained their protections,” Yoder said. In a previous statement issued by township trustees, Hovis said Yoder’s office ignored “multiple red flags,” including misspellings in email addresses and incorrect contact information.

“Yoder’s employee did not take any action to verify that she was communicating with the Township Fiscal Officer, saying, ‘Just an email from you with the routing and account number would be OK,'” he said.

Yoder has defended the legitimacy of the bank involved, indicating Green Dot Bank is registered in Texas and is an FDIC bank and is registered with the state to transact business in Ohio, she said.

Yoder reiterated her stance that the township’s decision to disable cybersecurity protocols created the conditions for the breach. She added that it remains unclear whether the township has since enabled MFA.

The FBI is investigating the breach, which involved multiple fraudulent transactions over several weeks.