Unclaimed Money Search

Seeing as to how large the Golden State is and the sheer amount of celebrities and high rollers doing business there, it’s actually not surprising that the California unclaimed money pile comes second only to New York’s. What’s perplexing is the number of famous people owed cash from state unclaimed property. It’s not as if these people are difficult for the Unclaimed Property Division to locate. Check-out this piece about celebrities with California unclaimed money checks to their name:

“One of the main reasons for the inability of government to return forgotten cash to its owners is that they can’t be located. Problem is, who would think people like ZsaZsa Gabor, Angelina Jolie, Victoria Beckham, Gerri Halliwell, Bradd Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Lopez, Adam Sandler and Marlon Brando would be difficult to find? Their names and the names of several other celebrities’ are some of the names in the California missing money list and yet they haven’t heard from the officials in the California Unclaimed Funds Division. They are all owed checks for unclaimed money by California amounting from hundreds to the thousands in Ms. Jolie’s case. This just showed California state officials’ interest in keeping this cash in the general fund for them to balance the budget deficits for as long as they can. In fact, there was a recent ruling by a federal judge on CA abandoned money, saying that the state wasn’t doing enough to return it to its rightful owners and for a while halted the state’s s ability to seize it until a proper method of reuniting it with the rightful owners was adopted.”

New state laws have since been adopted replacing the ones that kept the California Unclaimed Property Division to aggressively locate and contact citizens owed California unclaimed money. The amount reunited to owners after the new laws took effect at the end of 07 amounts to $284 million- a significant improvement. But a lot of people are still missing money out there. $1.2 billion are owed to Northern California residents and a whopping $300,000 to a Sacramento non-profit organization.

Everyone should take the initiative and do an unclaimed money search. Who knows? It’s not just in the Golden State either- all 50 states have significant amount of cash belonging to its residents who have lost track of their assets. Check-out this rss feed for other State unclaimed property articles from an unclaimed money expert.

Crater Lake, located in the Hazelnut State, is the deepest lake in the United States and rests on the remnants of an ancient volcano. Another substance sits en masse inside the State’s Unclaimed Property Division- a quarter of a billion dollars in Oregon unclaimed money.

According to Cyndi Wickham of Oregon’s Department of State Lands in a report by local tv station KGW, “We’re holding money for one in four Oregonians. You have better chances at [getting] this money than winning the lottery.”

Here’s part of an interesting article on Oregon unclaimed funds:

Each year, the state of Oregon receives between $30 and $40 million in unclaimed property, but only returns about $10 million to the rightful owners. Since the owners of the other $20 to $30 million weren’t located, that money gets added to the total, so that $250 million on stands to grow. While it may be tough to believe that 1 in 3 Oregon residents are due a claim, these monies really come from sources that we all use everyday. The OR Department of State Lands describes some of the most common sources as follows:“Unclaimed property includes savings accounts, checking accounts, unpaid wages or commissions, stocks, dividends proceeds, refunds, money orders, paid-up life insurance policies, utility deposits and contents of safe deposit boxes.”

Watch this unclaimed money video- Unbelievable and fun to watch as Tiki Barber gives back $823,000 to one family and $525,000 to another on Dateline NBC!

 
So what are you waiting for? Get in touch with your missingmoney now!

The Utah State Treasurer is looking for 25,000 individuals and businesses who have lost track of their financial assets. Most of the names that are owed millions of dollars in Utah unclaimed property are probably oblivious of the fact that they have state unclaimed money in their name- the money wouldn’t have piled-up otherwise. Right now, the unclaimed funds in the Beehive State have piled-up to an excess of $100 million!

Every year people lose track of their assets due to a change in address and neglecting to leave behind a forwarding address.. When financial establishments can’t locate the rightful owners of abandoned assets like bank accounts, uncashed checks, and insurance policies, they are required by escheat laws to turn these over to the state after 5 years. The last example (insurance) makes up a quarter of Utah unclaimed money accounts, says Utah unclaimed property administrator Kim Oliver. “Maybe your mom or dad bought you a life insurance policy when you were a little kid. You’ve moved since then and Prudential couldn’t find you when the ownership policies were cashed out. So if you think you were with this firm, you could be getting something.” Oliver is talking about Prudential Properties who changed to stockholder format from policyholder format after which thousands of couldn’t be contacted for their payouts. This in a report from local newspaper The Deseret News.

With the cost of food, fuel and basic commodities going-up, Americans are scrambling to find ways to get extra money just to get by. Doing an unclaimed money search can be one of the quickest (and legal) ways to extra funds in your pocket. Who knows? You may missing money right now and not even know it.

With the weak dollar and the current state of the US economy, quick and easy money would most certainly be a blessing for most Americans right now. A recent story in “The Independent” reported that a record 28 million Americans are relying on food stamps to survive. Is this The Great Depression ‘08? Not quite, but across the U.S, rising fuel, the housing slump and national credit crunch is forcing Americans to make lifestyle changes. Fact is, more and more people all over the country are working extra hours and looking for ways earn a few more bucks to make ends meet. Ironically, a lot of them might not have to look any further than their State Treasury Department. Not many people are aware that they are owed money by the government but it’s a fact. Residents of the 50 states are owed almost $40 billion spread-out among the individual Treasury Departments and New York State’s unclaimed money account is one of the biggest.

State unclaimed money can come from various sources for various reasons. 17,000 Albany residents for example have yet to cash their property tax rebate checks amounting to $5.6 million. Any unclaimed checks will get turned-over to the State Comptroller on March 2009 as NY State unclaimed money. WXXi recently reported that Monroe County has 40 uncashed checks waiting for it in the New York State Comptroller’s office. “For confidentiality reasons I can’t tell you the exact amount, but the funds on all the claims range from less than $50 to several thousand dollars.” Emily DeSantis of the Comptroller’s office said. A total of roughly $8 billion in NY unclaimed money and property are just waiting to be claimed by their rightful owners most of whom are unaware they’re have unclaimed funds in their name. Those that have heard about unclaimed property money usually don’t bother to check thinking it’s too much of a fuss. These are the reasons why the money is piling-up. On Monday this week, ABC’s WSYR helped dozens of Central New Yorkers find over $11,000 of their missing money. Four callers on “The Morning News” found-out they had at least $1,000 NY unclaimed money in their name.

The New York State’s Unclaimed Property Law require that lost assets in the hands of businesses and financial institutions be turned-over to the state after a ‘dormancy period’ of 2-5 years depending on the type of asset. These can be uncashed checks and money orders, insurance policies, stock dividends, long-dormant bank accounts, safe deposit box contents and other financial assets. The state then holds on to them until the rightful owners show-up. There’s no time limit as to when owners of unclaimed money can claim their cash, but doing an unclaimed property search in New York would be the more sensible thing to do especially in light of a recent news report about a man getting arrested for stealing New York unclaimed money.

The North County Gazette reported July last year that an owner of a Brooklyn processing company was charged with defrauding over $32,000 New York unclaimed money from the state. He did this by posing as the rightful owners of the funds using personal confidential information like Social Security numbers which he had access to in his line of work. He was a licensed process server and CEO of the company. There was another case just last month in Delaware about an employee with the State government doing the same thing. Reports like this just stresses the urgency for people to do an unclaimed money search in New York and other states to check if they are owed cash that should be in their pockets and not going to those of other people’s.

They say everything comes bigger in the Texas- the cowboy boots, the long-horn cattle, steaks, cars, prairies, and piles of money. Texas unclaimed property money that is. Texas state comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn has almost two billion dollars in unclaimed assets to give away to the state’s residents. Well, it isn’t so much giving away as giving back since the forgotten cash was already theirs to begin with. The funny part is most of the two hundred thousand residents owed Texas unclaimed funds aren’t even aware they’re missing money.

People tend to forget about collecting salary or insurance checks when they find new jobs and relocate in a hurry. They also forget to leave behind forwarding addresses after they relocate which is one of the primary causes for lost checks. When business and financial establishments can’t find the rightful owners of these abandoned financial assets for five years (in Texas), they are handed over to the state as dictated by Texas Unclaimed Funds Law which follows the country’s escheat laws. The unclaimed property stay with the Texas state Comptroller’s office until their owners come to claim them.

Unclaimed money in Texas covers anything from forgotten bank accounts, unclaimed tax refunds, savings accounts, stock and cash dividends, uncollected insurance benefits and money orders to gift certificates, un-cashed checks and contents of safety deposit boxes that are considered abandoned by their owners. The latter is the only example of tangible assets under the Texas Unclaimed Funds Law and and they are sold off on eBay after 2 years of being turned over to the State Comptroller. So if you are looking for antiques or family heirlooms that your Texan relatives may have lost track of over the years, your best bet is to look soon or risk allowing them to show up on eBay.

Texas unclaimed funds division manager George Tamayo says “From our experience, we determined we were getting the most bang for our buck on eBay.” and goes on to say “It’s more cost-effective, because we are able to do the auctions ourselves.” His state was one of the first to make use of the auction website early in 2002, switching from the old method of selling off abandoned properties through live physical auctions. According to Jackie Schroeter, manager of safe deposit boxes in Texas, selling items on online auctions saves her office a lot of time and effort. With the live physical auctions, the office of Unclaimed Property would’ve had to close down to coordinate them, due to a lack in manpower. It only takes a handful of clicks with a computer mouse now.

The earnings from the online auctions are handed back to the Texas unclaimed property fund where they still can be reclaimed by their rightful owners at any time. “The Unclaimed Property List contains the names of Texans with property valued at $100 or more that was reported to the state within the last year.”, says Treasurer Keeton Strayhorn who went on to say in a recent report, “Since I took office, I have returned more than $532 million in unclaimed property to its original owners,”

This is good news indeed for people living in the Lone Star State, but don’t think that the TX Comptroller shows up at your front door and to hand your lost assets to you. Unless you don’t have an immediate need for extra cash in your pocket, you should start searching for unclaimed property in Texas or other states now!

According to MO State Treasurer, Missouri unclaimed money has grown to the massive amount of 400 million dollars. This heap of cash will almost certainly grow, because like in most other states, MO takes in more unclaimed money every year than they return to Missourians. Among the variety of reasons why these assets remain unclaimed, is the fact that the majority of residents are not aware of unclaimed money, and those that are do not know the correct way to search.

With MO unclaimed money rolls nearing a half of a billion dollars, the “Show Me State” might want to change its nickname to the “Show Me The Money State”. So where does all that cash come from? There are many dozens of different sources for unclaimed money, but some of the most common are safe deposit boxes, certificates of deposit, abandoned bank accounts, life insurance policies, forgotten stocks, and checks that have not been cashed.

Despite the fact that there is no time limit on claiming abandoned cash, MO only guarantees that they’ll hang on to items from safe deposit boxes for one year (though they do occassionally hold on to them for longer). According to the MO State Treasurer’s web site, this is how they handle these items: “Although State Treasurer Steelman would like to keep the contents of safe deposit boxes until an owner or heir is identified, the unclaimed property vault used to store non-monetary items of value (jewelry, coins, etc.) reaches capacity every couple of years. When the vault is full, the Unclaimed Property Division hosts an auction, and the proceeds generated from the sale of items from safe deposit boxes is recorded in the name of the safe deposit box owner. If owners or heirs are identified, they receive the entire proceeds from the sale of the items.”

It is clear that for those citizens who use or have used a safe deposit box, it is vitally important to quickly get your search started if your items hold some sentimental value to you, but at least you’ll get the money if they sell your items. It’s lucky for the majority of us, most of the money doesn’t come from these auctions.

Whether you’re a former or current MO resident, or in some cases, haven’t ever lived in MO at all, the odds that lost money is owed to you, are in your favor. And the great thing about cash from unclaimed money is that the cash already rightfully belongs to people. This means there are no games or gambling involved. The main thing keeping missing money from turning in to found cash, for most people, is their knowledge about where to search, and how to search.

Countless myths exist about unclaimed money. The most common of which is the idea that performing a simple online search on any old web site is doing a complete search. Sadly the majority of these so called “official” searches, are anything but, and their data is quite often very outdated if not totally false, and only there as a selling point. The other myth is the idea that the state’s databases are up to date and accurate.

There is no uniform law that dictates when the states, including MO, must update their unclaimed money databases. For this reason, the best thing you can do is search regularly. If your cash has only been classified “unclaimed” recently, it likely won’t appear in MO’s database until it is first been turned over by the account holder, and then whenever the state treasury office adds the record.

To learn more about these unclaimed money search obstacles, and many more, and it is important to seek expert assistance in your search for missingmoney, to be sure that you locate and claim all possible cash owed to you.

The number of claims for lost financial assets in the Vermont Unclaimed Property Division are up 66% from last year. Almost 10,000 Vt residents got back $4 million from safe-deposit box contents, forgotten bank accounts, unclaimed insurance benefits, utility checks, unclaimed tax refunds and similar assets. According to the State Treasurer Jeb Spaulding in an interview on Vermont unclaimed money: “Unclaimed property refers to accounts in financial institutions, companies, non-profits, even state governments that are some kind of financially related property, whether it’s a tax rebate or a savings account or travelers checks, or gift certificates, insurance policies. And when the institution, whether it’s a private or public entity, loses contact with the person whose property it is, for a certain number of years, usually it’s three or five years, they turn it over to the state to try to find the rightful owners. Every state has an unclaimed property office, and there are some easy ways for people to search and find out whether a particular state has something for them.”

Vermont’s unclaimed property law require businesses, insurance companies and financial institutions to hand these lost assets over to the Treasurer’s Office and although there is a record number of unclaimed property claims the past fiscal year, there’s still around $45 million Vermont unclaimed money waiting for its owners to come and file for their share.

The VT State Treasurer’s office collected around $6.4 million worth of Vermont unclaimed property from July 1 of last year to May 1, 2008. The financial entities holding-on to these unclaimed assets are required to make efforts to contact and inform owners about their missing money before handing them over to the state after 3 years.

The average claim for unclaimed money in Vermont is $431 and current and former residents of the New England state are urged to check and do an unclaimed money search to see if they have Vermont unclaimed money in their name. They might be one of those owed considerable amounts like the retired Burlington teacher who was found to have $150,000 in her name from old stocks her husband had invested in way back in the 60’s.

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The recent fires in central Florida has displaced hundreds of people from their homes- arid weather and high winds combined to fuel brushfires that quickly spread to residential areas in Daytona beach and a 5-mile stretch of road going through the area was closed from traffic. According to a news report by USATODAY, the fires took-out 800 acres and 500 homes had to be evacuated. Luckily, no homes were destroyed and residents should be back in their households by now.

Hurricanes, fires and similar calamities would surely add to the already humongous Florida unclaimed money pile sitting in the Sunshine State’s Treasury Department. At present, there’s roughly a billion dollars worth of unclaimed property in Florida belonging to millions of citizens. Most of the people owed unclaimed funds aren’t aware they have money waiting for them- reason why the money is fast piling-up.

The main reason people lose track of their financial assets is by changing addresses. Specially changing addresses in an emergency where there’s no time to leave behind a forwarding address. Mailed checks or financial notices from banks, insurance companies and tax refunds from the IRS are inevitably returned to their senders as undelivered mail and are turned-over to the State as unclaimed property after 3-5 years. Unclaimed money can also result from mix-ups in financial records after company mergers of banks and insurance companies.

According to Brendan Farrington of the Associated Press, “there are 7 million unclaimed accounts owed to 4 million Floridians.” You’d be surprised at who’s on the Treasurer’s list of people owed unclaimed money in Florida- NBA star Alonzo Mourning, Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers Band, Terry “the Hulkster” Hogan, and actors Burt Reynolds and Wesley Snipes are just some of the famous names that appear on the Florida unclaimed money list. Believe it or not, even State Governor Charlie Crist is owed $69.70 from an old insurance policy- money he lost track of after switching apartments several years ago. “That is surprising to me,” Crist says in a WINK news report “I would think the records would reflect my accurate address.”

Everyone should do an unclaimed money search in Florida and other states- even more so now in the face of the ongoing U.S. economic slump where any amount of extra cash can be a big help.

Over a thousand items from the Unclaimed Property Division Virginia’s Department of Treasury have recently been auctioned-off as part of it’s annual ‘clearance sale’. These are a field days for bargain hunters and seekers of antiques and priceless memorabilia. According to a report by VA’s WBDJ7, items range from diamonds to a picture of American racing legend Dale Earnhardt.

Each year, the Division of Unclaimed Property In Virginia collects lost financial assets and abandoned items from financial institutions (banks, insurance companies, the IRS, etc.) and from deposit boxes and police evidence rooms, respectively. According to their official website, “The Unclaimed Property Division is responsible for the custody of lost, outstanding and dormant accounts reported to them by businesses that have lost contact with the rightful owner when the last known address of the owner was in Virginia. The Division attempts to locate the rightful owners or their heirs to help them claim their property.” They try to locate the owners of the unclaimed assets by publishing names of owners of VA unclaimed property in State newspapers and auction-off tangible items that still go unclaimed after a year.

The total amount of Virginia unclaimed money and property right now amounts to roughly $300 million belonging to thousands of residents and even some citizens from out of state. A search for unclaimed property in Virginia and other states can turn-up extra cash for scores of Americans in financial trouble right now.