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It is not a secret that the Rocky Mountains go straight through Wyoming, but there’s an even more interesting mountain, of more immediate interest to the less half of a million people living in the Equality State – a mountain of money! Currently, the State Treasury Office is holding in excess of $26 million in Wyoming unclaimed money, and waiting for the actual owners to come forward and take what technically already belongs to them.

The State Treasury web site lists the following as the most common types of assets that can become “unclaimed”: deposits, savings accounts, customer overpayments, refunds, endowments, insurance policies, checking accounts, annuities, uncashed dividends, credit balances, uncashed insurance claim payments, moneys distributable from trusts, stocks, safe deposit box contents, traveler’s checks, money orders. Each of these types of unclaimed property has a unique dormancy period, which is the amount of time that must pass before they are determined to be abandoned and law requires that they be passed along to the state. These dormancy periods vary greatly, but are most commonly 5 years in Wyoming.

Although Wyoming has given back millions of dollars to the rightful owners, the vast majority remains unclaimed, and the main reasons boil down to a lack of awareness about these assets. Luckily, Wyoming is a custodial state, and that means that they will hold these monies forever, and will never take possession of them. There is no expiration date on lost cash.

As residents the state with the lowest population, citizens living in Wyoming have excellent odds of finding missing money owed to them. But most people are unaware that other states may be holding money owed to them. You don’t even have to have left the state of Wyoming for another state to be holding your assets. A lot of companies have offices and/or locations in multiple states, but they can obviously only be headquartered in one place. For this reason, employees can lose track of money and not ever realize it even if they search, because the cash is being held in the state where their company has its headquarters. Similarly, insurance companies may service different states, but they can only have one headquarters. Things like insurance overpayments will be passed along to the proper division in the state where the insurance company is incorporated, not necessarily the state where the account holder lives. These are just a couple of examples of why it’s very important that people search outside of their home state.

Aside from limiting searches to one state, beginners often don’t know that they ought to search numerous times. In fact, they should search frequently. Because of the varying dormancy periods for each type of unclaimed property, and because an employee of the State Treasurer’s Office must manually add each listing to the system, the abandoned assets list changes constantly. A search could find no record one day, but checking the following day might produce a nice treasure for a diligent searcher.

Experienced searchers have many strategies that give them an edge when trying to locate forgotten funds, and the wisest beginners learn about these and put them to work in their own searches to ensure they’ve found all possible claims.

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NC Lotto Ticket Worth $168K Unclaimed (FOX Carolina)
North Carolina lottery officials said a Carolina Cash 5 ticket worth more than $168,000 is still unclaimed.

NSI reveal over £30 million of unclaimed premium bond prizes exist … – WebWire
A major nationwide search has been launched by National Savings and Investments (NSI) to track down the winners of over 550,000 unclaimed Premium Bond prizes worth over £30 million in total. This is the largest amount ever left unclaimed and …

Final Week to Submit Applications. After Deadline, Money Will Go Unclaimed. Shore Mortgage ‘We Understand’ Program, … (PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance)
Shore Mortgage, a Michigan-based lender specializing in conventional loans for the past 25 years, today announced the final week of the company’s own economic stimulus program that benefits the “forgotten” yet conscientious homeowner who is current with their financial obligations and who applies for the money for his/her primary residence.

Arkansas Agencies Have No Gambling Addiction Programs (The Morning News)
LITTLE ROCK — Speaking to a legislative panel last week on planned legislation to create Arkansas’ state-run lottery, House Speaker Robbie Wills said a portion of unclaimed prize money would go to the state’s programs to help people with gambling addictions.

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Despite giving back a record $26.2 million in Connecticut unclaimed money in 2006, there are still tens of millions of dollars in abandoned assets waiting to be found and claimed by the rightful owners – average people who simply abandoned or forgot about these monies for any number of reasons.

Recent efforts by the Connecticut State Treasurer’s “The Big List” program have given back 100 million dollars back to Connecticut residents in just the past 8 years, but more money continued to come in than went out so the mounds of unclaimed funds held by the gov. keep on growing. Due to the fact that new forgotten funds outpace the return rate, the odds of finding a claim for any given name are getting better all the time.

The majority of people wonder how unclaimed funds could be real, because the fact that across the country there are billions of dollars waiting to be found by the rightful owners simply seems unbelievable. Why would these people abandon their cash? Are they nuts? No, they’re just normal people, and it has been estimated that 7 out of every 10 Americans are owed some kind of claim!

So how is all this cash being abandoned without the owners knowing it? In most cases it is as simple as to remembering a savings or checking account that wasn’t a primary account, or not leaving a forwarding address to all the necessary people when a person moves. Additionally, the State Treasurer’s web site lists the following as common kinds of lost properties in Connecticut: safe deposit box contents, stocks, life insurance policies, travelers’ checks or money orders, deposits, uncashed checks, and bonds or mutual fund shares.

As these various types of accounts lay untouched past their unique dormancy periods (unique for each account type and each state), they are handed over to the state for safe keeping until the rightful owner steps forward to claim them. So if the dormancy period on a given account does not run out for another few years, a person searching today will not find a record of their abandoned assets, despite the fact that it’s out there in pre-escheat, meaning the dormancy period has not yet expired. Additionally, states do not have a uniform law mandating when the records are actually added to their databases so a person could in theory search and not find anything, while the record is added the following day, week, month or year. The only real way to be thorough about your search is to search often.

On top of limiting themselves to a single search, inexperienced searchers often search only the state they live in, not knowing that there is a possibility for unclaimed funds owed to them in states they’ve never lived in or even passed through, for a variety of reasons such as employers’ corporate headquarters or insurance company headquarters.

The issues noted above, and many others, can be avoided once people learn about proper search tactics. Seeking the advice and guidance of experienced unclaimed asset finders often makes the difference in whether or not a person with limited knowledge in these matters finds all cash belonging to them or not.

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$40 million waiting to be claimed from state (WLOX-TV Biloxi)
JACKSON, MS (WLOX) – Mississippi has $40,000,000 waiting to give out, and some of it could be yours. The money is in the state’s unclaimed property fund, which is held by the state treasury until the rightful owners are located.

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Denver CBS affiliate KCNC TV reported in May that State Treasurer Cary Kennedy currently holds more than $50 million in Colorado unclaimed money. CO missing funds most commonly come from things such as , utility refunds, dormant checking accounts, oil and gas royalties, stocks and bonds, uncashed insurance checks. Citizens who might have held one or more of these accounts or other similar types of accounts are encouraged to look for unclaimed funds.

While it is difficult for most people to believe that their fellow citizens could just “forget” or abandon cash that belongs to them, it is surprisingly common. It is so common in fact that many estimate that 7 in 10 Americans are due some type of claim, and CO residents aren’t an exception.

Despite the fact that there are tens of billions of dollars in unclaimed funds across the country (tens of millions in CO alone), the vast majority of it is never claimed and millions more are added in every state annually. The main reason is the fact a majority of people haven’t ever heard of unclaimed funds and the handful that have don’t have any idea about how to find them and claim what is rightfully theirs.

One of the first issues that many searchers run in to is not knowing where they need to search. The truth is, there is no one website to search on. In fact not all searches can be done online, so if you limit yourself to just the computer, you could be missing out on some cash.

Beyond not knowing what site to search, a lot of people looking for missing cash believe that one search is all you need to do. Aside from the fact that there is not one website that houses all claims, all sites are continuously updating their records and the list of names of people due a claim gets larger annually in each state. In order to be confident that you have located all potential claims you ought to search regularly. Many people don’t find claims that were added to their state’s database because they were added the day, week, month, or year after they searched.

A lot of people who don’t live in and haven’t ever even been to CO are also owed CO unclaimed funds for a number of reasons. For example, if a person works for a company in their home state, but the company is incorporated in CO, things like abandoned payroll checks might be held by CO’s state treasury, while their home state won’t have any record of these funds. A similar problem arises when people have insurance policies through insurance companies that are headquartered out of state. This is yet another reason that one search will not cut it.

Any way you slice it, the state of CO is home to more hills than those Rockie Mountains, it is home to a multi-million dollar heap of abandoned assets. We can all agree that the people are much better at managing their own money than any government agency, so anyone who believes they might have money coming to them need to take some initiative and get started on their search. Using ideas from expert locators can keep people from making beginners mistakes that would otherwise stop them from locating their money.

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Winning Mega Millions ticket unclaimed (WRIC 8 News Richmond)
Associated Press – February 18, 2009 6:55 PM ET ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) – Check those old Mega Millions tickets. Virginia lottery officials say a winning Mega Millions ticket worth…

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Usually when people think of the state of Idaho, what comes to mind? Potatoes of course. Lots and lots of potatoes. But there is also a huge pile of something else that you might say is “no small potatoes” – Idaho unclaimed money. Idaho’s lost money fund has swollen to a whopping $40 million and counting and all of this cash belongs to residents wise enough to locate it and claim it.

The majority of people find it difficult to believe that average Idaho citizens have somehow just abandoned $40 million, and that Americans across the nation have abandoned almost $40 billion (yes, with a “b”, billion), but believe it or not, the odds that any given person is owed unclaimed property are better than the odds that they are not due a claim. The main reason for this is that these missing monies come from so many different sources. According to the web site of the Idaho State Tax Commission, the dept. charged with handling these assets: “These include stocks, bonds, mutual funds, bank accounts, uncashed payroll checks, utility deposits, traveler’s checks, contents from deposit boxes, and more. Most of the assets are ones that people didn’t know they had or just forgot about, and sometimes they are worth thousands of dollars.”

In order for money to be considered abandoned or “unclaimed”, it has to lie dormant for a period of time that is specific to each type of asset and state. Idaho considers most kinds abandoned after five years of dormancy, though many are available for claiming after only one year.

There are a handful of reasons why assets may go unclaimed, but it’s generally simple as forgetting to leave a forwarding address for financial institutions or previous employers. If a piece of mail is sent back to the sender, and the rightful owner does not contact the sending party within the dormancy period, the holder is required by law to hand the funds over to the state.

The issue Idaho has, as do all other states, is reuniting lost money with its true owners. Despite state awareness efforts and popular media coverage, the majority of people are still just not aware of unclaimed property. Even the few that are in the know generally do not have a clue where to start their search. There are a number of people out there searching, but even those people do not know all the tactics they need to utilize to increase their odds of locating claims.

For the reasons stated above, Idaho is now holding over $40 million in unclaimed property, and that number will almost certainly grow, because more and more money is handed over to the state each year and it outpaces the amounts returned to the citizens. For this reason, it’s extremely important that people who are interested in looking for missing monies, learn how expert finders find these monies, and then put these same tactics in to action in their own attempts. There are right ways to search, and wrong ways to search, and until people learn the difference there are a number of hurdles that can get between them and their money.

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The state lists unclaimed properties (Bureau County Republican)
PRINCETON — The Illinois Treasurer’s office is looking for about 2,800 residents whose address, or last known address, was in Bureau County. Those people have some unclaimed cash or property coming to them.

$200,000 Powerball Ticket Unclaimed (FOX 9 News Twin Cities)
A Powerball ticket sold in Stearns County in February 2008 will go unclaimed at 5 p.m. Friday, costing one Minnesota lottery player $200,000.

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Did you ever wonder what happens to abandoned bank accounts and other financial assets whose owners (and relatives of the original owners) can’t be found? The Unclaimed Property Law requires financial institutions and businesses to pass them along to the government after a certain ‘dormancy period’. These assets will remain in the hands of the State Treasury until the rightful owners claim them. The law also requires states to make efforts in getting the lost money back to their rightful owners. Some states show more efficiency than others when it comes to this and the state of West Virginia regularly places among the nation’s top 10 in rate of return, according to a recent statement by the State’s Treasury Department.

Jubilant West Virginia Residents all over the state have been getting unclaimed money checks from financial assets they forgot about at some point in time . In Harrison County, a total of $193,563 has been given back to a handful of residents of the state in less than three weeks – this according to a recent report. In Beckley, a total of $220 thousand in West Virginia unclaimed money checks were handed out, and an elderly South Charleston woman was given $23,000 worth of United States Savings Bonds that were in her deceased sister’s name. “To receive $23,000 that you basically didn’t know existed is quite nice,” said Anne McConihay. “I had heard things about those bonds through the years but never saw any of them.” stated the 84-year-old McConihay who had also owned bonds purchased by her father but does not exactly recall what happened to them. “Ms. McConihay’s situation is a perfect example of why states should be given the responsibility of returning these bonds,” noted State Treasurer Perdue. “This money belongs to people, not the federal government. And states already have the systems and expertise in place to complete this mission.”

After receiving $117,000 from the State Treasury Office, Andy Bragg, of Southern West Virginia Paving said, “We were very surprised when the State Treasurer’s office called and told us they might have some unclaimed property that belonged to us.”

Despite efforts of award winning West Virginia State Treasurer John Perdue to give back missing money that belong to his state’s residents however, there is still roughly $110 million waiting to be discovered in West Virginia alone.

The West Virginia unclaimed money total is so massive for the same reasons the nationwide unclaimed money from lost assets has amassed to over $33 billion. According to State Treasurer John Perdue, unclaimed money can arrive from a variety of sources – mainly because people just plain forgot about them. “They may have a paycheck coming to them that they didn’t realize or some stock their grandparents purchased when they were a child and it was forgotten in a safety deposit box,” Perdue says. “There are all kinds of unclaimed property examples where money was forgotten.”

No matter the reason, residents of ‘The Mountain State’ always need to do an unclaimed money search in West Virginia and other states. The easiest and most convenient way is to do this online with the assistance of a legitimate unclaimed money expert who can show you the proper methods of doing thorough and effective searches for your unclaimed money as well as pre-escheat properties (lost assets that have not yet been handed over to the state).

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Does the state owe you money? Thousands of Illinoisans on the … – Belleville News Democrat

Does the state owe you money? Thousands of Illinoisans on the
Belleville News Democrat,  USA - 22 hours ago
These residents are owed more than $70 million in unclaimed property. Unclaimed property can consist of money from inactive savings and checking accounts,

The state lists unclaimed properties (Bureau County Republican)
PRINCETON — The Illinois Treasurer’s office is looking for about 2,800 residents whose address, or last known address, was in Bureau County. Those people have some unclaimed cash or property coming to them.

NYS Holding $9 Billion In Unclaimed Funds (WCBS-TV New York)
Do you need some extra cash? Forget checking your coat pockets or under the sofa cushions. As CBS 2 HD found out, you could have a big chunk of change waiting for you and all you have to do to get your hands on it … is ask . The odds of winning the New York State Lottery are 18 million to 1. But take a gamble at the New York State Comptroller’s Web site and chances are 1 in 10 you will hit the …

Unclaimed Money and Free Makeup – Associated Content

Unclaimed Money and Free Makeup
Associated Content, CO - Jan 20, 2009
This unclaimed money is usually owed t o taxpayers who fail to take all the tax exemptions to which they are legally entitled, leaving a lot of free money

Do you have unclaimed funds? – Mail Tribune

Do you have unclaimed funds?
Mail Tribune, OR - Jan 25, 2009
The Treasury Department also keeps a list of unclaimed money held by federal agencies. The largest pot of money, as of the end of September, belonged to the

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The State of Mississippi is home to a few of my favorite things in the world – sweet potatoes, rootbeer (invented in Biloxi in 1898), and catfish. Mississippi’s Treasury Dept. has also become home to something that’s on top of my list and probably yours too – money. Mississippi unclaimed money, to be precise. “Nearly 1 in 5 Mississippians have money representing over $38 million that needs to be claimed,” stated Mississippi State Treasurer Tate Reeves in a recent press release. This is clearly great news for the numerous families that suffered hurricane losses in years past, and are now trying to deal with major setbacks in their budgets.

When people pass away or relocate to a new place, they often forget to leave a forwarding address or a will and this results in lost mail and inheritances. Financial notices, tax refund checks and similar items get sent back to sender (the IRS, banks, insurance companies, etc.). According to Treasurer Reeves, “They are required by state law to turn them over to the Treasurer’s Office after a dormancy period. After that dormancy period is over, they turn it over to the state. We put a book out every three years and send it out through various media,”.

According to a recent report by NBC’s Dateline, a handful of lucky Mississippians were recently reunited with their forgotten funds and it turned out that it was a pleasant shock for the majority of them. A Biloxi, Mississippi resident found out he had $30,000 from an investment his father had forgotten to tell him about before he passed away. A couple who had lost all of their possessions to the recent hurricane got $250,000 from Mississippi unclaimed money. Another woman who was attempting to rebuild homes for her mother and herself got $100,000. Gordon White, was in the middle of building his dream home when Katrina struck and he was forced to live in a trailer, but then got $200,000 from bank stock shares his father had never told him about. One of the largest claims given out yet was to a Vietnam veteran who was forced to retire from his job as a company supervisor due to post-traumatic stress. Turns out that he was owed almost a million dollars from old company stocks he had forgotten about when he retired from said company.

If you or a relative has resided in Mississippi before, chances are good that a part of the $38 million in Mississippi unclaimed money also belongs to you or someone in your family. Search for unclaimed money in Mississippi as well as other states now. The national unclaimed money total now exceeds 35 billion dollars and the cash is just sitting there, waiting for the true owners to step forward and claim it. Doing an online search for unclaimed money can be as easy as putting in a person’s name and other identifying information in a state unclaimed money database. It becomes more confusing however, to do a thorough search in several states – a good idea if you have relatives scattered across the nation. The best thing to do is to first learn the proper and thorough search methods for doing productive unclaimed money searches online.

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Louisiana’s State Treasury Department has hundreds of millions in unclaimed funds from lost assets that residents have forgotten about or abandoned. These properties include uncashed payroll checks, old bank accounts, stocks and stock dividends, royalties, utility deposits, interest payments, insurance proceeds, retirement benefits, and the contents of abandoned safe deposit boxes. By law, organizations and businesses are required to turn these over to the state if their owners do not claim them after a period of 3 to 5 years for most assets. A huge piece of the $330 million total Louisiana unclaimed money comes from unclaimed savings bonds. State Treasurer John Kennedy is trying to reunite matured abandoned United States savings bonds as well as other types of Louisiana abandoned property with approximately one in every six of the state’s residents.

Over 80,000 people in Baton Rough alone, owed almost 27 million dollars, are listed in the Louisiana unclaimed funds databases. The State Treasurer recently stated, “The state owes Louisiana residents millions of dollars in unclaimed property, and we want to give this money back.” Louisiana’s Unclaimed Property Law requires the State Treasury Dept. to print names of businesses and individuals who are owed money in newspapers across the state annually on top of making other attempts to seek out the rightful owners. At an “Awareness Day” that was held at the Lakeside Shopping Center, the Louisiana Dept. of Treasury gave back $133,000 in unclaimed funds owed to residents of New Orleans. “This was one of the largest unclaimed property events we’ve ever had,” said Treasurer Kennedy. “We estimate that we had around 3,000 people in attendance over a five hour period. The average unclaimed property claim is typically around $200 to $400, but one individual at the mall claimed more than $20,000.”

The majority of people do not know about government missing money which is one of the main reasons why the total unclaimed funds and cash in the United States currently stands at roughly $35 billion. Tough to believe and a bit ironic, but people also lose track of their money in their haste to earn more of it – especially in the fast paced lives we lead now. Working multiple jobs, skipping from job to job, changing of address or names (due to marriage), retiring, and death are all things that can cause us to lose track of financial assets belonging to us. Mailed checks and financial notices can be sent back to sender if people do not leave behind forwarding addresses (which can happen in emergencies). Disasters such as hurricanes in the past have displaced a number of families, which is sure to cause the already whopping unclaimed property fund in Louisiana to grow larger. Government efforts to reach out to the owners of unclaimed funds are not sufficient in returning all of the 330 million dollars currently in the hands of the state. Residents are encouraged to take matters in to their own hands and do a search for lost cash in Louisiana as well as other states. Louisiana unclaimed funds claims for $250 or more must be notarized, but it’s possible to do a claim online for less than $249. Web searches can be relatively simple and quick – the hard part is knowing where to search.

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In 1880, Canadian Prospector Joe Juneau brought about the gold rush era by discovering gold in Alaska. America’s chilliest state is also home to the largest oil field on the continent of North America and its main source of revenue is the oil and natural gas industry. There is another source of wealth that the majority of residents of America’s Last Frontier have not yet discovered- Alaska unclaimed money and property. Alaska has the lowest population density in the entire nation – meaning life is not really that hectic or busy compared to the country’s more packed cities like New York. It’s strange, then, that according to an article by Fairbanks’ The News-Miner, tens of thousands of residents of Alaska have unclaimed property waiting for them in the state capital of Juneau.

People and businesses sometimes lose track of their properties while changing names, addresses, or closing shop and just plain forgetting. Unclaimed money comes from lost assets like uncashed checks, long-dormant bank accounts, income tax refunds, insurance policies, forgotten stocks and stock dividends, and other financial assets. The Alaska Unclaimed Property Act requires the establishments holding these to hand them over to the state if their owners can not be found after a certain period of inactivity. This ‘dormancy period’ in Alaska is one year for utilities, 5 for stock shares and checking and savings accounts, 7 years for non-bank money orders and fifteen years for traveler’s checks. The only tangible assets covered under the act are safe deposit box contents.

There are more than 300 thousand accounts of Alaskan unclaimed properties in the state listings and 12 thousand more items are added to this list annually. Everyone should do a missing money search because it’s very surprising who’s name pops up on the list of owners of unclaimed property. The Russian Airline company Aeroflot, Hawaiian Airlines, China Airlines, the Alaska USA Federal Credit Union, even KIAK radio and KTVF-TV have claimable assets waiting for them in Alaska. Even government entities are owed abandoned money! Local governments and school districts in Kenai, Barrow, Anchorage and Juneau are among the names listed in over a dozen unclaimed property accounts. The names of former State Governor Tony Knowles, his wife Susa, former Gov. Steve Cowper, former Gov. Bill Sheffield, former Lt. Gov. Lowell Thomas Jr., are also listed as being owed money. These people are public officials, easy to track down and they have not yet discovered their unclaimed property being held by the state.

According to the Alaska Unclaimed Funds Division of the Governor’s office in a recent statement, “The Unclaimed Property (UCP) staff conducts searches for property owners by selecting recently reported properties from the division’s database and using online tools to locate the owners. The target is to search for 50 owners each month, however when there are fluctuations in staffing and/or workload the UCP places a priority on responding to claims requests from property owners which involves verifying claims and processing payments.” In light of this, it would be in the best interests of all residents of Alaska to take some initiative, perform an internet search for unclaimed property and find out if they are owed money by the state. The wild Forget-Me-Not is Alaska’s official state flower, and residents would definitely not want to forget about their cash being held by the Treasurer either.

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By now it seem we’ve all grown tired of what I like to call “bailoutmania”.  I mean, who isn’t getting a bailout at this point?  It’s starting to look like none of us should have been responsible with our money, but instead lived outside of our means so that Uncle Sam could send us some phony money.  But here’s the kicker – the government is throwing tens of billions at the “Big 3″ domestic auto makers (GM, Ford, and Chrysler), even though these companies have MILLIONS in unclaimed money already owed to them, but they’ve been too lazy to claim it!

That’s right, one unclaimed money expert has discovered that each of the big three automakers has millions in forgotten assets that are just waiting to be claimed:

However, it seems that the big three auto makers did not account for other streams of cash. Edward Palonek founder of an Internet searchable database for unclaimed money reports that the big three have millions of dollars sitting and collecting dust. He goes on to say, “That the problem of auto makers not collecting money extends to almost all foreign car makers, such as, Toyota and Honda.”

So these missing monies may extend beyond the U.S. automakers in Detroit, but at the moment we have the exact numbers, thanks to that article. According to the article, more than $2.2 million is owed to the Ford Motor Company, and is spread across 1,300 records. GM (General Motor Company), on the other hand, has an estimated $3.4 million across more than 1,500 unclaimed funds records. At the same time, Chrysler turned up nearly 1,200 unclaimed asset listings totaling in excess of 1.6 million dollars!

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like these manufacturers ought to scrape together their own missing money before they put their hands out for billions of our tax dollars, like some common beggar! At the same time, do we really think companies that can let millions of dollars simply go missing are responsible enough to handle billions of OUR dollars to reorganize? If they aren’t smart enough to keep tighter books, why should we trust them with our money, instead of telling them to file bankruptcy like we would have to if we’d been so reckless?

Well, nothing is going to slow down the Bailoutmania Express, so I might as well stop whining… But I will encourage all of those workers who’ve lost their jobs with one of those 3 automakers to do their own unclaimed funds search, given that experts estimate that 7 in 10 Americans are due some type of claim. When times are tough, the only thing better than earned money is found money.

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We mentioned a few months back that billionaire NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg was due $76,000 in unclaimed funds, but it turns out he’s not the only high roller overlooking some cash. A recent Forbes.com article highlights a few other big dogs who are missing a few bucks:

Note to Yahoo! Chief Executive Jerry Yang.

Word is that you are trying to wring a few more bucks out of Microsoft for your struggling Web portal.

Maybe this will help: The state of California says you have $3,008.46 worth of unclaimed Microsoft dividend checks coming your way.

Yang isn’t the only billionaire in Silicon Valley who’s got a little unclaimed cash. Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs has $465.26 waiting for him from an insurance company. Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin never picked up $1,023.91 earned as a graduate student from Stanford University, in addition to $9.53 worth of dividends from The New York Times Company. Google’s other co-founder, Larry Page, has lost track of $262.26. Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison, who currently tops Forbes’ list of the best compensated executives, can hang onto a little more Oracle stock this year: he’s got $51.43 coming from the U.S. arm of Swiss insurer Zurich.

Of course those amounts are drops in the bucket for these billionaires, but these are exactly the types of unclaimed assets being discovered by average citizens every day. The article goes on to note that these revelations come as California continues it’s attempts to reunite people with $5.3 billion in CA unclaimed cash, which we’ve discussed here a number of times. As law makers continue to salivate of these monies State Controller John Chiang still appears to be on the side of the folks, trying to reconnect 8.7 million Californians (even billionaires) with their share.

The battle for lost assets in California is all the more reason for residents of that state to get moving on their search for missing money. Mr. Chiang can’t do it all, and he’s fighting with politicians who can’t wait to get their hands on your cash, so stop procrastinating and get your unclaimed property search started today.

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