SAN ANTONIO -- You could have thousands of dollars in property tax money coming to you and not even know it.

Bexar County Tax Assessor Collector Sylvia Romo said taxpayers overpaid their taxes by about $7 million.

Since the KSAT 12 Defenders reported the story in July, the tax office has doled out $2.9 million. The Defenders asked the tax office to make some changes, and as a result people are cashing in.

When the Defenders met with Romo in July, she explained the tax office is only legally obligated to send one letter informing taxpayers who have overpaid, or in some cases double paid their taxes.

"I didn't even get that letter," said Frank Allotta, who is among thousands who apparently did not get or did not see the letter.

Allotta saw the news story in July that alerted people that the county had millions of unclaimed dollars sitting in an account. He has since been able to recover an overpayment of $500.

Romo said in addition to the $2.9 million already paid out, there is still $4 million dollars waiting to be claimed by Bexar County taxpayers.

In response to the Defender's request, Romo's office recently added a crawler to the annual tax statements letting people know they've overpaid. Taxpayers should know that crawler is subtle. But less subtle and more user friendly is the addition of names to the tax office Web site.

To find out if you are owed money, simply click on search for overpayments, then type in your last name and within seconds a list pops up, with details of how much you overpaid and when.

"It's definitely a credit to KSAT for publishing the story and letting everybody know that they could be potentially owed some money," Allotta said.