Palestine Fraud Alert

PALESTINE – A warning is being sent out to the residents of Palestine about a fraudulent service that is attempting to collect payment from the citizens on behalf of the city. There is an online bill pay service, identified as doxo.com., which has a link established to collect payments for water services from the city. According to a news release from the city, this service is not authorized to take payments on behalf of the City of Palestine and any payment sent through this service is not forwarded to the city in a timely manner. Utilizing this service may dramatically decrease the speed of a payment, causing the payment to be received by the city long after the due date. This may result in a disconnection of services, creating inconvenience to the water customer. The service also charges a premium service fee to the customer for using the system.

The City of Palestine does have a native online bill pay service hosted through the city website at cityofpalestinetx.com. This is the only legitimate online payment service that is used by the city. This service is accessed by visiting the City of Palestine homepage and browsing the Online Services menu.

The Palestine Police Department is currently looking into this. The Police urge citizens to notify the Police Department, as well as the City of Palestine Customer Service Department if they have accessed and used this fraudulent system to tender payment for city services.