Hatboro-Horsham Offers Grace Period If Tax Payments Were Stolen

HATBORO-HORSHAM, PA — Hatboro-Horsham School District officials are planning to offer a grace period to residents who recently mailed out their school district real estate taxes but who may have been victimized by mail fraud that recently took place within the postal system.

During the Aug. 16 regular school board meeting, Bill Stone, the director of business affairs for the district, informed school directors that recent news reports of fraudulent checks originating from a U.S. Postal Service collection box in Horsham may have involved “some folks who attempted to pay their school real estate taxes.”

Patch recently reported on the issue, which apparently involved individuals putting checks in the mail only to discover that the checks were subsequently washed, with the check totals changing to amounts much higher than the checks had been made out for.

At the school board meeting this week, Stone said the district is asking residents to “critically review” their bank statements and online banking activities to make sure the district actually did receive the tax payments they may have mailed in.

“We are hoping to be proactive to make the community more aware of the issues that have been occurring at the post office,” Stone said.

Stone said if anyone did use the Horsham post office to mail out their checks to follow up by contacting the school district’s tax office to ensure the payments were actually received and processed.

He said if there is no record of the tax payments having been received, then individuals should work with their banks to determine whether or not any suspicious activity may have occurred, and, if it did, they should contact the Horsham Township Police Department and file a police report.

Stone said the concern for the district is that it does not know who may have tried to send in their payments by mail through the Horsham post office, and that courtesy tax bill reminders aren’t actually sent out until October, at the earliest.

Stone said that if someone was a victim of the fraudulent check situation, the district will likely extend the two percent tax bill discount period for a longer time as long as the person can provide proof that they were victimized, either with a police report, copy of the altered check or documents from their financial institution detailing the fraudulent activity.

The district, Stone said, soon plans to post this information on the Hatboro-Horsham website to make the community aware of the situation.