A Mortgage Servicer Sent a Letter About an Address Change. Was It Deed Theft?

Welcome back from vacation! Someone may have stolen your home.That isn’t precisely what the paper letter from PNC Bank, my mortgage servicer, said, but it was close.It had displayed, in large font, a highlighted exclamation point followed by a foreboding message — “We’re confirming changes to your address” — across the top.The letter went on.

“We recently received changes to your address information for your account(s), due to an address change request submitted by you or a joint account holder, either to PNC directly or through the U.S.Postal Service.”My wife and I had made no such request.

But in a world where deed theft — the attempt to literally swipe your property out from under you — is rampant, the letter signaled that thieves might be up to no good.But were they? It was way harder than it should have been to answer that question.After checking PNC’s website and seeing no evidence of an address change, I called the 800 number on the letter, as it instructed me to do.In these sorts of instances, it’s best to first make sure that the letter itself is not fake and check that phone number against the company website.The representative on the phone couldn’t explain the letter, saw no evidence of it in her systems and told me I could disregard it.

That wasn’t reassuring, so she told me that I could add a layer of security to my account, but only if I went to a PNC branch....