The victim in Fairfield Township corruption saga? Ex-trustee: ‘It’s me’

With sentencing for fraud, theft set for Monday, Taletha Coles, ex-township trustee, tells judge in burst of emails she ‘would have been awarded trustee of the year’ if not for everyone out to get her

Taletha Coles, already on the hook for more than $42,000 in restitution in her criminal case and facing a possible sentence of more than four years for flouting her position as Fairfield Township trustee, has been largely silent in recent court appearances, beyond acknowledging a guilty plea on four of 42 counts filed against her.

But with a sentencing hearing scheduled Monday morning, Coles unloaded on former workers, township board members, reporters, State Board of Accounts investigators, her attorney and more in recent letters to the county probation department and to Judge Randy Williams, according to reports filed with the court Friday.

Taletha Coles, right, consults with her attorney, Alex Dowers, during a Jan. 12 hearing in Tippecanoe Superior Court 1. (Photo: Dave Bangert)

When asked by a probation officer compiling a pre-sentencing recommendation report about the crimes at hand – a combo of tax exemption fraud, conflict of interest and official misconduct between 2019 and 2022, when she was township trustee – Coles concluded that she’d been “misled with information and much of it was set up.”

Coles made it clear who she thought the victim was in the case, telling the probation officer: “It’s me.”