Thousands of residents across the region who own property in Monroe County recently received incorrect property tax bills from Charlotte County.
The printing error has led to a domino effect as people receive the letters from a county in which they do not own property.
NBC2 uncovered the reason behind the error.
Gina Pabalan, a Fort Myers resident who also owns property in Monroe County, was one of the 35,429 people who received a tax bill from Charlotte County for properties she doesn’t own.
"I was pretty surprised to get a tax bill for two properties in Charlotte County that we don't own," she said.
Pabalan reached out to NBC2 for answers.
NBC2 spoke to Charles Bear, director of tax operations for Charlotte County. He said that the issue stemmed from a data processing error. Charlotte County and Monroe County each sent their property tax data to TC Delivers, a company that prints and mails both counties' tax bills. Due to a mistake in how the data was merged, Monroe County property information ended up on Charlotte County tax bills, causing the mix-up.
The vendors said the mistake was a result of incorrectly saving data for one county while processing another. The tax bills for both counties were mistakenly "householded" together, leading to the confusion.
Bear reassured residents that this was not a data breach and that the correct tax bills had now been sent out. However, the fallout from the mistake could continue.
"In the next year, some people may have paid the wrong bill in error," Bear said, adding it will take time to undo this.
For those who received an incorrect bill, Bear advises not to pay it. If you’ve already paid by mistake, refunds will be issued.
NBC2 has reached out to TC Delivers, the vendor responsible for the error, to learn about their quality control measures to prevent future issues. As of now, they have not responded, but officials are hopeful corrective actions will be taken.