Trending
WARREN -- A pretrial and trial date were set for April 16 and May 12, respectively, for a woman who once served as Vienna Township's fiscal officer.
Linda McCullough, who served as fiscal officer from 2019 to early 2024, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a superseding indictment charging her with three additional counts of tampering with records. The new charges follow an indictment from October that charged her with two counts of theft in office, four counts of tampering with records and a charge of telecommunications fraud.
Specifically, the previous indictment accused McCullough of using her elected position to pay personal credit card bills as well as personal and private business charges at several stores, including Pitt Stop Drive Thru, Walmart, Sam's Club, Home Depot, Lowe's, Tractor Supply and Partzilla.
The previous indictment also alleged McCullough electronically transferred the money from township bank accounts and created, entered and submitted false records to conceal the transactions.
The new indictment alleges McCullough tampered with records between Aug. 6, 2021, and March 21, 2024, and noted the value of the property or service stolen as $116,370.
Trumbull County Assistant Prosecutor Charles Morrow recommended to Trumbull County Common Pleas Court Judge Cynthia Westcott Rice that McCullough be held on a $25,000 bond because the additional charges increased the missing money in Vienna's accounts to $116,000.
However, Rice ordered McCullough's $20,000 personal recognizance bond to be continued after hearing from her lawyer, J. Gerald Ingram, who said she was taking care of elderly relatives and considered the fact that she has complied with the conditions of her bond thus far.
"She does not own a passport, she's appeared every time she has been requested to appear; she knew of this investigation well in advance of the charges being filed," Ingram said. "(She) made no effort to flee, simply retained a lawyer. If there was any case where a recognizance bond would be appropriate, I'd submit it as this case."
Ingram refused to comment following her appearance. Morrow was not available for further comment, according to a representative from the prosecutor's office.
ELECTED OFFICIAL REACTIONS
Vienna Fiscal Officer Jason Miner, who was in attendance with two residents and former fiscal officer Corrine Hardman and Tom Shay, who served as Hardman's assistant during her tenure, said he expects the case to be drawn out for a while.
"The (state) auditor's office doesn't expect to be done with their audit until October; the forensic audit won't be done until October. Until the forensic audit is actually done, I don't think there's going to be any finalization of charges," Miner said. "We're not really going to know the full extent of who did what until the forensic audit's done toward the end of the year."
"She made a serious breach of public trust, and I hope she serves a lot of time in jail for that if she's found guilty; I hope she lets everybody know if she was not the only one involved in this crime," he added.
Vienna Trustee Phil Pegg, who also attended, struggled to find the right words to describe how he felt afterward. Pegg previously pushed for McCullough to be booked, fingerprinted and photographed after alleging she had previously left the state once after her initial charges.
"She betrayed a community -- not just myself, forget about me. She betrayed our entire community. There was no reason for it. If there's a reason why we don't have fire and ambulance service, it's totally due to her," Pegg said. "It's despicable what she did; justice can't come too soon."
Pegg said he didn't personally know McCullough before her time as the township's fiscal officer, noting she was a member of the community's neighborhood watch and other organizations.
"It's a sad, sad thing what she did to us, and I mean the entire township. It still goes back to that $1.2 million that she took out of the money market," Pegg said. "She embezzled that money. It does not matter what she used it for -- she could have given it to widows and orphans; it was not her money to take."
"It's so frustrating for me because I try hard to make sure everything is done correctly and then she just, she's smiling at us while she's stealing from us," he continued. "We received fake reports and that's a big thing that a lot of people, they just won't acknowledge that; she was reporting one thing to trustees and she was reporting something else to the state."
Pegg said there was only so much they could derive from a report, and questioned what they were supposed to do if the reports they received for two years were "bogus."
"Everybody says they can do better; let's see what they can do with their checking or their finances if the bank starts giving them bogus statements," he said. "Should we have let it go on as long as we did, as far as the overtime for the ambulance service? No, we shouldn't have, but you know what? It was our choice, it was not hers, and she's definitely not the conscience of Vienna Township when she can steal from us."
Pegg said he still believes McCullough should be booked and has heard the argument that it was a nonviolent crime -- which he disagrees with.
"This is a very violent crime. Because of what she did, there are people being injured and not getting (an) ambulance service on time. Every one of them should sue her," he said.