Camillus (WSYR-TV) - A mailing mix-up has a Camillus man puzzled and frustrated.
For months, John Newman has been receiving mail that’s supposed to be going to the West Genesee School District. And to complicate matters, the mail will often contain someone else’s social security number.
Newman’s best efforts to stop the unwanted letters haven’t worked.
“The first one tells you the above claimant has filed a claim for unemployment insurance and he’s putting the school down as a reference,” Newman said.
Newman has received the same State Labor Department form at least a dozen times. The first one arrived in November.
“Two weeks later I got another one... two weeks later I got another one... and it keeps going and going,” Newman said.
The mail is addressed to the West Genesee School District Transportation Office just down the street, but has Newman’s home address.
Newman says he’s contacted the State Labor Department, the Post Office and the school district – multiple times – thinking the problem had been fixed. He even tried returning the letters to the sender, only for them to end up back in his mailbox.
"I'm doing so much legwork here and it's all within three blocks of me,” Newman said.
Eventually, Newman opened the letters to see if there was anyone else he could contact and he noticed an individual’s social security number on the documents that keep piling up.
“If I’m going to throw it away someone will dumpster dive, find the info and ruin the guy’s credit record for life and I don’t want to be privy to that,” Newman continued. “Somebody’s got to do something about this. I don’t know who else to turn to.”
After we interviewed Newman, the State Labor Department told us they contacted the man filing for unemployment and learned he accidentally provided them with the wrong address for the transportation office. They say the problem has now been fixed for all future correspondence.
