GOSHEN, Ind. — A former booking specialist at the Elkhart County Jail has turned herself in after an investigation revealed she stole over $27,000 from former inmates’ secure Trust Fund accounts.

26-year-old Haley Atherton, who began working at the jail in June 2023 and has since been terminated, was formally charged following a police investigation that began on June 9. The alarm was first raised when a jail secretary found a small, unresolvable $22.25 deficit in a former inmate’s Trust Fund account. Detectives discovered the inmate had been released over a year prior and had not authorized any transactions.

The investigation uncovered a pattern of theft spanning from July 2024 to June of this year. Atherton skimmed funds from several former inmate accounts and used the money to create

See Full Page