The warning from Councilman Ritchie Torres was dire: take advantage of his office’s free tax preparation service or risk being exploited by a predatory tax preparer.

“Residents of the Bronx paid hundreds of dollars of their own pockets for tax prep services that we provide for free,” said Torres, standing outside his Hofmann Street office to plug the service by Urban Upbound, which has prepared taxes at the office for four years. “And so no longer do residents have to subject themselves to predatory tax prep.”

With an April 17 tax preparation deadline looming, Torres urged locals to take advantage of his office’s on-the-house service that’s offered four days a week via walk-ins or appointment. Constituents who qualify to take advantage of the service must have made $66,000 or less last year and are required to live in Torres’s 15th Council District which includes Bedford Park, Fordham, and Olinville. The terms were laid out by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, which recruited Urban Upbound as part of its NYC Free Tax Prep initiative that kicked off in January.

The last four years have seen a total of $4 million in tax refunds to residents within the district, according to figures presented by his office. This year, 518 tax returns have been prepared at the office totaling $881,000 in tax returns.

“This program has been a resounding success,” said Torres, flanked by Bishop Taylor, founder of CEO of Urban Upbound, and two constituents who’ve benefited from it.

In the district, where 38.5 percent of residents live below the poverty line, a tax return doubles as an economic shot in the arm to the local economy.

Torres’s warning comes as ads touting a rapid return via a so-called rapid loan have dotted the district, a tactic Torres described as “financial exploitation” for constituents who depend on getting a quick loan. The ads by tax preparers rarely mention the hefty interest rate terms, sometimes at a whopping 700 percent, tacked on to receiving a loan, according to Taylor. Foreign-born New Yorkers are often preyed upon the most by unscrupulous tax preparers.

“[A]nd beware sometimes they make mistakes on your returns and they say you’re going to get $1500 back and they give you a check based on $1500. And then in the end there’s a mistake made you only get back $500. Then the other $1000 that you already received becomes a loan at the highest interest rates that they could charge,” said Taylor. “We have experienced this firsthand across the city, where residents have been taken advantage of by these predatory services.”