Jennifer Teising sentenced: One day locked up for each night spent away while still Wabash Twp. trustee

Former Wabash Township Trustee Jennifer Teising plans to appeal felony theft conviction, three-year sentence and $27K in restitution. Judge holds off on start of jail time for appeal filing

Former Wabash Township Trustee Jennifer Teising walks from a Tippecanoe County courtroom after she was given a three-year sentence — including a combined 248 days in jail or community corrections — and an order to pay more than $27,000 in restitution. She plans to appeal. (Photo: Dave Bangert)

When Judge Kristen McVey got to the 248-day part of Jennifer Teising’s sentence – 124 days in the Tippecanoe County Jail, followed by 124 days in the work-release setting of Tippecanoe County Community Corrections for the former Wabash Township trustee – she called it “the poignant part.”

That’s the number of nights, according to phone records presented during a three-day bench trial in December, that Teising spent away from Wabash Township while still collecting a paycheck as township trustee between June 2020 and March 2021.

During a Monday morning sentencing hearing, McVey told Teising she’d been in a position of trust and worked to conceal that she wasn’t living in Wabash Township after she sold her home and, in the words of the judge in her January ruling for the 21 counts of felony theft, pursued “a nomadic RV lifestyle.”

“I’m not saying it’s the crime of the century,” McVey, judge of Tippecanoe Superior Court 5, said. “But it’s one … that shook the faith of the public.”