Retired NYPD officer gets help from 7 On Your Side with car insurance mistake

When it comes to paying bills, many of us "set it and forget it."

Michael Tarulli of Staten Island, paid his car insurance with autopay only to discover a random stranger had been added as a driver on his car, and he'd been paying an extra high rate for months.

The retired NYPD officer called 7 On Your Side for backup when he couldn't get his money back.

"They said there was a brand-new driver added to your policy. I said who?" Tarulli said.

Ironically, the retired NYPD officer couldn't solve his own mind-boggling cold case.

"This is baffling to me. They said it was a new driver, and it was my policy, I said 'What new driver?'" Tarulli said.

Last May, a mysterious stranger was added to the first responder's insurance plan -- a teenager.

"This person has nothing to do with me; she shouldn't have been added," he said.

The new, additional driver on his policy more than doubled his monthly payment, from $426.50 to $1039.83.

"These are three of the five payments that were over a thousand dollars," Tarulli said while showing 7 On Your Side's Nina Pineda his bills.

He called his insurance carrier, Liberty Mutual, to appeal his case.

"They said 'She resides with you.' I said 'No, she doesn't,'" Tarulli said.

He would come to find out the teen lived on another floor of the multi-family home where he previously lived.

"I don't have her social. I don't have her DOB. I just found out her first name, I wasn't even aware of that either," Tarulli said. "They said, 'Well, we sent you a letter, and you never responded, so by law what we did was legit.'"

His account, set to autopay -- and more than double the usual -- processed for five straight months.

"So, you never got his letter?" Pineda asked.

"They're asking me if I want to add her. I never responded. So, they took it upon themselves to add her," Tarulli said.

"I don't think a lot of people know this could happen," Pineda said.

Tarulli said the extra mystery driver on his policy knocked his bank account into the negative.

"My checks bounced because of this," he said.

Tarulli was able to stop the automatic withdrawals, but couldn't get the extra thousands he paid reimbursed.

"The fact they did this at all; they took my money without my knowledge, and I have no power to get it back," he said. "They made it very clear they were not going to refund me."

The last time he felt this powerless was responding to 9/11, Tarulli was straight out of the academy as a 24-year-old when he was assigned recovery at Ground Zero.

"18-hour days, most of the time. I slept in a van and went right back to it," he said. "You learned things about yourself that you never imagined for a million years."

So, the retired officer called 7 On Your Side for backup.

7 On Your Side contacted Liberty Mutual. After leaving Tarulli's home, he called and said that by the time we pulled out of the driveway, the insurance company had already called him about the teenage driver mistakenly on his account.

In a statement, Liberty Mutual said, "We do not publicly comment on or provide details of our customers' policies. Rather, in every instance where we were asked for information, we promptly reached back out to our customer to address any questions or concerns with him directly."

"They did the right thing, finally!" Tarulli said.

$2667.00 back in his account!

"Thank you very much. If it wasn't for you guys, I wouldn't be smiling right now," he said.

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