The city of Albany will give property owners a break after tax payments were stolen from mailboxes.
A spike in mail theft nationwide hasn't spared the city of Albany, where property tax checks have been stolen out of blue streetcorner mailboxes. Reports of missing mail and "washed" checks being cashed by thieves have been circulating on neighborhood online bulletin boards for several months.
City treasurer Darius Shahinfar says to date a handful of residents have contacted his office.
“We've had, I believe about 16 people who have come to us, basically, because they were told by their bank that they may have been a victim of fraudulent check," said Shahinfar. "Someone's stealing their check and then fraudulently deposit depositing it in others’ bank accounts. We first became aware of the problem back in kind of early January, when we heard the first couple of instances come in. We thought they may have been, you know, one or two off. But as the months progressed, and as February progressed to that we found that there were there were more.”
Shahinfar notes most of the thefts occurred uptown.
“What we have seen right now is there’s been some concentration around South Main, around Whitehall, and a couple other places, too," Shahinfar said.
Shahinfar says the problem is that the property owner still owes the tax.
“The issue is, if they can, if the people who have had their check stolen, talk with their banks, they can be reimbursed through insurance for fraud protections by their bank," said Shahinfar. "The problem is their property taxes are still due and they’re due late with penalties after the end of January. So we moved to allow my office to remove the interest payments for those who have had their check stolen.”
While Shahinfar's office has moved as quickly possible to stem the issues that come with paying the property taxes, he says the full extent of the problem is unknown.
“People don't necessarily know that their check has been stolen and not deposited with the city for their property taxes," Shahinfar said. "If the check was deposited someplace, all they'll see in their bank statement is that the check was deposited, if they really look at it, the check was deposited to somebody else, to the benefit of somebody else, but without doing that they may not know. So we're gonna be sending out all the open bills in a couple of weeks, I think. And I think that way, we'll be able to find out if others have had their check stolen out of mailboxes. And just to be clear, this is not affecting just property tax checks. This has been affecting utility payments, credit card payments, all sorts of other payments as well.
Consumer advocates advise using a fine-point Sharpie when writing checks, as that type of ink cannot be removed from paper checks. Albany Police spokesman Steve Smith says the department has opened a case.
"In January, we became aware of thefts from mailboxes, specifically checks, various types of checks, some that may have included property tax checks in the city of Albany," Smith said. "We've since begun an investigation. We've been in contact with our partners at the U.S. Postal Inspector’s office, and we've been working with them on this investigation to try to determine exactly what's going on. Right now the investigation is ongoing. We're urging anyone with information to please come forward.”
Smith advises residents to bring mail directly to the post office or make payments online. The U.S. Postal Service did not reply to a request for comment.
