The unsealed envelope that showed a Social Security number to every postal worker
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The unsealed envelope that showed a Social Security number to every postal worker
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In December of 2005, an envelope moved through the U.S. postal system with a Social Security number printed on the outside — visible to every carrier and clerk who touched it. The company that sent it had spent fifty years telling Americans it could be trusted with their most sensitive financial details. So how does a company built on that exact promise end up mailing out the one number it was legally bound to protect?
In this episode, we trace H&R Block from a 1946 bookkeeping shop on Main Street in Kansas City to a sprawling financial services company that overstated its own earnings, mishandled its own state taxes, and settled lawsuits over retirement accounts and refund loans — asking whether a company can keep its founding promise while expanding far beyond the expertise that made it trustworthy in the first place.
Person: Henry W. Bloch
Location: Kansas City, Missouri
Date: December 2005
Case: a Social Security number printed on the outside of a mailed envelope
Status: disclosed as affecting less than three percent of mailings, amid a wider pattern of accounting and product failures
- H&R Block was founded in 1946 by Henry and Richard Bloch with $5,000 borrowed capital and a $5 tax-service ad in The Kansas City Star (1955)
- In August 2005, the company disclosed it had overstated earnings by $91.1 million over two years, citing insufficient internal resources for complex tax accounting
- In February 2006, H&R Block announced it had miscalculated its own state income taxes, owing $32 million in back taxes
- New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued over the Express IRA product in March 2006, alleging 85% of account holders lost money after fees; the case settled in 2009 for $11.4–$19.4 million plus $750,000 in costs
- California settled a separate 2009 case over refund anticipation loans for $4.85 million, and H&R Block exited that business entirely in 2011
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