Meet Robert Faulds, the 92-year-old Navy vet whose internet sleuthing could save the city $11.4 million

Robert Faulds is a Korean War Navy veteran, a Kensington native, and a retired insurance professional. At 92 years old, he has now become an amateur internet sleuth, too. With no staff and only a few simple tools, Faulds tracks down Philadelphians eligible for a city property tax relief program or who have unclaimed assets sitting unaccounted for with the state Treasury Department.

“Right now, I’m a little frustrated,” griped Faulds on an early December Monday. “I don’t quite understand how to use my new printer.”

He needs his printer to generate the letters he’s sent to roughly 1,500 Philadelphia families alerting them to unclaimed funds tied to their name that he discovered online.

Faulds estimated he sends about 30 to 40 letters to Philadelphia residents each week. He spent about $750 on ink over a two-year period, he said.

In return, he asks recipients just to mail back a stamp so he can keep sending out his own, unofficial letter alerts.

The letters are not forms; they vary depending on whether he’s writing about an unclaimed homestead exemption or unclaimed funds. But they all open with the salutation “Dear Neighbor” and end with the same request.

“‘If you are of a mind to be a little generous and can send me a postage stamp that I could use to send another person a copy of the same proposal, that would be nice,’” he recited.

He’s received stamps, but he’s gotten back much more, too.

One recipient who declined to be named because of concerns about privacy gave Faulds a $2,000 check. Others have sent checks for $50 and $100, Faulds said. A nearby neighbor who learned of the homestead exemption from Faulds visited him with a $100 thank-you gift.

Faulds finds Philadelphians with unclaimed cash or an untapped homestead exemption by searching the city’s property website and the Pennsylvania Treasury’s unclaimed funds database.

This past year, Faulds’ research prompted what Michele Kelly, director of special investigations at the Philadelphia City Controller’s Office, called “probably one of the longest” investigations her unit has ever done, focused on the homestead exemption.

The homestead exemption is available to all Philadelphia homeowners who live in their own house and reduces the property’s tax bill by lowering its assessed value. It has been lauded for helping lower-income Philadelphians stay in their homes as values rise, but abuse of the program costs the city valuable tax dollars.

The controller’s investigation revealed about 23,000 ineligible properties claiming tax benefits provided by the city’s homestead exemption program for the 2025 tax season. That includes properties owned by corporations, and smaller rental properties that aren’t owner-occupied.

Faulds’ work could help the city recover an estimated $11.4 million in tax revenue annually, according to the controller’s report. And the office couldn’t have done it without him.

“He opened a door, and the city will benefit,” Kelly said. “It’s a lot of funding that wasn’t looked at.”

At a news conference, Controller Christy Brady said her office investigates every outreach it gets.

“If anybody has a tip, please bring it into our office,” Brady said.

For his part, Faulds is more concerned with equitable taxation. He’s mindful of “people in the neighborhood where I came from paying taxes, and they don’t make much money,” he said. “I’m motivated more by that, I think, than anything else.”

His involvement with the controller’s office began when, while searching the city property website, Faulds noticed something unusual: A share of homes with Philadelphia addresses claimed the exemption even though the homeowners appeared to live out of state.

“When they put [a] mailing address [in] New York, that’s what ticked me off,” Faulds said. “Because you’re supposed to live at the address that qualifies you to get the homestead.”

Faulds started mailing his research to the controller’s office, which launched its full-scale investigation into Faulds’ findings in September. Kelly eventually met with Faulds at his home and dropped off a goody bag of office merch.

“He’s with it, and he is bright,” Kelly said. “He knows everything that’s going on. … For 92, I didn’t see any lapse of memory.”

Over more than nine decades, the Wissinoming resident has lived many lives.

Faulds grew up on Helen Street in Kensington and remembers attending an integrated Thomas Powers Elementary School, where, at age 6, he envied the kids whose parents could afford to have little bottles of milk delivered to them. “I was really impressed,” he recalled 86 years later.

At 17, he enlisted in the United States Navy. He served during the Korean War, and talked about having his photo featured in the old Philadelphia Bulletin. He recounted the day in the early 1950s when he was on a tanker near Korea and a ship carrying his brother pulled alongside. The Philadelphia brothers were reunited by crewmen who pulled Faulds to his brother’s moving ship using a rope tied to an aluminum chair.

“I had taken my camera with me, so I got pictures of me, my brother, and the ships moving together,” Faulds said of the scene. “And, of course, I kept all those pictures.”

After his Navy years, he returned to his hometown and took some classes at the University of Pennsylvania before spending more than 40 years working locally in the insurance industry.

A stroke about 15 years ago left him a lot less mobile, and the nonagenarian gave up driving in the spring.

So Faulds reinvented himself by delving into the annals of the web.

“That’s about all I do,” he said.

Faulds is the last living of his parents’ six children, he said, and he often questions how much longer he has. With the rest of his time, he said, he wants to keep working. In fact, Faulds said, he recently found 50 corporations improperly claiming the homestead exemption and wants to call it in.

“And I’m trying to understand how I could get in touch with [Michele Kelly],” Faulds said, “and send her a copy of this list again.”