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Concerns about mail-based notifications and suggestions for alternative methods

0:40:37

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Council Member Julie Menin expresses concerns about using mail for notifications, as it can enable deed theft. She suggests phone calls as a safer alternative for suspicious cases.

Mail-based notifications may inadvertently assist deed theft perpetrators
Suggestion to call individuals for suspicious cases instead of mailing
DOF processes over 500,000 documents annually, making individual calls challenging

Julie Menin

0:40:37

Sure.

0:40:37

Understood.

0:40:38

I guess my concern is that one of the main causes of deed theft occurs in the mail.

0:40:43

Oftentimes, the perpetrators of the deed theft are going through rifling through people's mail.

0:40:48

So by mailing to them, then we're not fixing the problem and, arguably, are enabling the problem.

0:40:55

So my question is, are could you instead call those individuals?

0:40:59

Because that would be a far safer means of communicating with

Colette McCain-Jacques

0:41:03

them.

0:41:03

So we record over 500,000 documents a year, and, it is something that we could look at, but, I'm not sure if that's gonna so the thing is with Citi register, what we're doing is just extra steps, but, technically, we're not supposed to do that by law.

Julie Menin

0:41:29

Yeah.

0:41:29

Yeah.

0:41:29

Yeah.

0:41:29

Sure.

0:41:29

Yeah.

0:41:30

Yeah.

0:41:31

So a a couple things.

0:41:32

One, a request to share the data with council members.

0:41:36

We would very much appreciate that if you could share it first with the chairs and then we can disseminate it.

0:41:41

But of the 500,000, how many are falling into the this suspicious category where you think there could be an issue?

0:41:49

That's the dataset that I'm requesting that you call those individuals.

0:41:52

That's not the full 500,000.

0:41:54

It's a narrow subset of that.

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DOF's process for notifying property owners about suspicious deed transfers

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Statistics on flagged documents and deed fraud rejections