Archive for April, 2009

WI houses a lot more American goodies than just milk and cheese. The Badger State is also home to Harley Davidson Motorcycles, the Green Bay Packers, and catfish (Potosi, WI). An amusing fact I just picked up about Green Bay that few know about is that it is also the world toilet paper capital. There is another kind of paper that can be found piled up in WI’s Treasury Dept. though – the good-smelling kind, green. Yes, Wisconsin unclaimed money totaling nearly 400 million dollars is in the State Treasurer’s hands and they are looking to reunite it with over one million citizens who are owed their fair share.

Unclaimed property is turned over to the Treasury Office when forgotten funds aren’t given back to their owners after a specified period. The ‘dormancy period’ for WI abandoned funds is five years. Forgotten properties can come from numerous sources – uncashed savings and salary checks, lost or unused gift checks, stock dividends, lost traveler’s checks, forgotten bank accounts, and other financial assets that have been forgotten about and lost track of. The only tangible assets dealt with under the WI Unclaimed Money Law are contents of safety deposit boxes that have been determined to be abandoned. The State Treasury Office attempts to find the owners of family heirlooms, pocket watches, sports cards, coins, jewelry, etc. but ultimately has to auction them off at eBay after three years. “There are a lot of safety deposit boxes that get turned over to us which a lot of people don’t tell their kids, ‘Hey we have a safety deposit box.’ So we actively search for those owners for three years and if we can’t find them we auction off the contents of the boxes. We do that on eBay,” said State Treasurer Dawn Marie Sass.

According to WI’s State Treasurer in a recent interview during a report by the WI Radio Network, they simply run out of space to store all of the unclaimed assets as they keep piling up every year. “We do actively search for people for up to three years and then after that time, because we don’t have a lot of space, we do have these auctions”, she said in a recent report. The earnings from these items are then held by the state like all other abandoned monetary assets and are used by the state until the owners come to claim them. “Until we can find an owner or an heir, yes, we do use the profits to support our office…”, said Sass. These funds from auctioned unclaimed items in WI may still be claimed at any time though. “You know there are people who, you know, may be in the service and are stationed over seas for five, six, seven years and then they come back and realize that their, you know, mother’s safety deposit box was turned over. So, you know, they had no way of knowing that before they came back year, so we always keep the money earmarked for whoever that belonged to, so they never lose out.” Sass adds. The interest earned on these monies helps fund things like WI low-interest loans to municipalities and school libraries.

The State Treasurer has stated that one of the biggest checks for WI unclaimed property handled by her office was in the amount of $750,000. All the more reason that residents ought to do an unclaimed money search and learn if they have some WI ‘cheddar’ being held by the State Treasurer.

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$163,828 unclaimed Excellus BlueCross BlueShield funds in Rochester … – WHEC TV-10
More than 4,200 individuals and companies in New York State have forgotten about $589,521 in checks issued by Excellus Health Plan, including by its d.b.a., Excellus BlueCross BlueShield (BCBS). Of that total, more than $163,828 has not been claimed …

Pontotoc County to refund unclaimed bond money – Ada Evening News
The Pontotoc County Court Clerk’s Office has unclaimed bond money and may have refunds for the following individuals: Carol Cox, B.J. Hoskins, Dustin Buret, Ken Garrett, Daniel Scott, Don Barnett, Christopher Farriss, Justin Sipes, Scott Johnson …

Do you have money coming to you? – Myfoxorl and O
SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) – You may have some money coming to you and you don’t even know it. There are many forms of unclaimed property and in this economy getting your hands on what’s rightfully yours could be a big help. Omayra Rosario …

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Michigan is home to a lot of pop culture icons – Madonna (from Bay City), the ‘Motown’ music label, Eminem, Diana Ross (from Detroit), Bob Seger, Stevie Wonder… the list of famous musicians goes on and on. It is also home to the automobile capital of the world Detroit, affectionately known to residents as Motor City (which is where the term ‘Motown’ comes from) and Battle Creek, MI – ‘The World’s Cereal Bowl’ which is home to the Kellogg’s company. Certainly, many assets essential to American culture have come from ‘The Great Lakes State’. There are less known assets in Mich. that even most residents don’t know about though – hundreds of millions of dollars in Michigan unclaimed money! This money is just sitting-around in the Mich. Unclaimed Funds Dept. instead of where it belongs, in the pockets of the owners of the lost assets.

According to the State Treasury Dept., “The Michigan Department of Treasury has millions of dollars in lost or forgotten assets from dormant bank accounts, uncashed checks, valuables left in safe deposit boxes and stock certificates. Because these properties were considered abandoned and unclaimed by the bank or company entrusted with them, they are turned over to the state, as required by law. The Michigan Department of Treasury is the custodian of these assets and returns them to their owners (or the owners’ heirs) when they are rightfully claimed.”

The citizens who are owed Mich. unclaimed properties may have forgotten about their money when moving to another city or finding new employment. This is very common in the fast-paced lifestyle we’re all living now, and not remembering to leave behind things like a forwarding address is very easy to do. Because of this, mailed checks and notices often don’t reach the addressees and must be returned to the sender (like businesses and financial institutions or the IRS), where they must stay until the ‘dormancy period’ has gone by, and law dictates that these properties be turned over to the state. In Mich. this period is 5 years for most kinds of unclaimed funds.

All Michiganers and former residents of Mich. should perform a search for unclaimed property in Mich. – with hundreds of millions of dollars waiting to be found, the odds are great that they might be owed money. It is rather surprising whose names have come up on the missing money list. Domino’s Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan, Aretha Franklin, and even Eminem’s names have come up on the Mich. unclaimed funds owners database.

Sense it is a ‘custodial state’, there is no time limit for Mich. unclaimed funds to be claimed by its owners. In a report on Mich. unclaimed cash by ABC’s WZZM 13, the Mich. Treasury Department’s Gonzalo Llano said “The funds stay here forever until they are claimed by either the property owner or their heirs should the property owner be deceased,” But don’t you feel like the lost money would be more comfortable snug in their owners’ pockets than collecting dust in some cold, dingy State office? Educate yourself on how you can begin an exhaustive search, and locate all possible Mich. unclaimed property owed to you ASAP!

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$1 billion a day for stimulus – CNN Money
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The federal government has made available more than $75 billion for stimulus projects in the 10 weeks since President Obama signed the $787 billion recovery package into law. Not all of that money has hit the streets …

Making sense of the Bigger (yes) Better (?) Bottle Bill – Syracuse Post-Standard
Mike Greenlar / The Post-Standard A warehouse employee at Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Syracuse moves product into the pick area for truck delivery. Coca-Cola says the New York State Bigger Better Bottle Bill could force layoffs at the company. The …

Check For Unclaimed Funds Online (NBC Washington)
Are you owed some money from a local jurisdiction? Check for unclaimed funds online. Presented By: Waking the Baby Mammoth: Sunday at 9p On the frozen plains of the Siberian tundra, a reindeer herder chances upon a 40,000 year old baby mammoth – the most perfectly preserved mammoth ever found. On Sunday, witness the mammoth’s unveiling to the world, as scientists reveal her incredible story. …

Need money? You may have some coming (The Shawano Leader)
You may have money you didn’t even know about. Do you want to know how to retrieve it? The Office of the State Treasurer is printing names of people who have unclaimed funds in Wisconsin for 2008.

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In May 2007, Illinois State Treasurer State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias announced that the state’s “Cash Dash” abandoned asset program is holding roughly $1.4 Billion in Illinois unclaimed money. The only thing standing between the cash and its rightful owners is the knowledge that it’s out there and the knowledge to track it down.

Sadly beyond just Illinois, state treasury departments across the country continue to take in more unclaimed property each year than they return to the citizens. Because everyone believes in the old “if it’s too good to be true” saying, the majority of people do not believe that there are really tens of billions of dollars waiting to be claimed across the country. Even for those few who have learned the truth about unclaimed assets, the best way to track these monies down eludes them most of the time.

The Prairie is State is one of only a few states that is holding over 1 billion dollars on its own, which means if you are a resident of Illinois then you have even greater odds of tracking down a claim in your name, especially when you consider that the state has less than 13 million people and there are more than 10 million names on the state’s Illinois database.

Although there are many more, Illinois lists the following as the most common types of missing money: abandoned savings and checking accounts, unpaid wages or commissions, stock, bonds, mutual funds, un-cashed dividends, customer deposits or overpayments, credit balances, refunds, money orders, travelers checks, paid-up life insurance policies, safe deposit box contents. People who have had or know someone who may have had one of these types of accounts at some point in the past is encouraged to search regularly.

The Illinois State Treasury has handed back over 432 million dollars since it took control of the unclaimed property program in 1999, 84 million dollars of which was returned in 2006 alone, but with $1.4 Billion waiting to be claimed and more coming in all the time, the heap of cash will continue to grow.

Because money is constantly added to the fund, it’s very important to check regularly, not just one time. Money belonging to you might be added tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or depending on the type of asset in five years if that is the proper dormancy period. Each kind of property has its own dormancy period in each state, after which state laws require the holder to hand it over to the state who will then hold on to it until the true owner steps forward to claim it.

Further, residents of Illinois may be owed unclaimed property in other states even if they’ve never resided in or even passed through them. Items like insurance overpayments when an employer uses an out of state insurance company can result in found money located in other states. Issues often also arise when corporations are incorporated in another state.

The bottom line is that the state of Illinois is currently holding a massive amount of cash that is owed to its residents who just need to learn the correct ways to search, where to search, and how often to search. Learning these search tips from experienced funds locators in this field can greatly enhance your abilities to find your money.

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Check For Unclaimed Funds Online (NBC Washington)
Are you owed some money from a local jurisdiction? Check for unclaimed funds online. Presented By: Waking the Baby Mammoth: Sunday at 9p On the frozen plains of the Siberian tundra, a reindeer herder chances upon a 40,000 year old baby mammoth – the most perfectly preserved mammoth ever found. On Sunday, witness the mammoth’s unveiling to the world, as scientists reveal her incredible story. …

One-half of Lotto’s P347-M jackpot prize still unclaimed (The Daily Tribune)
Yesterday, April 23, marked the second month after the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) drew the biggest jackpot prize in nine-year history of local lotto drawing the winning six-number combination which paid a record P347-million prize.

$130,000 Lottery ticket unclaimed – Woodland Daily Democrat
The California Lottery is still on the lookout for a player who purchased a winning MEGA Millions ticket in Woodland one month ago and has yet to claim their prize. The ticket hit five of six winning numbers in the March 20 drawing, missing only the …

AZ homeless shelters get $771K – Arizona Daily Star
PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer announced $771,000 in state grants to homeless shelters Thursday, with $50,000 going to help Pima County residents. The grants were provided through the Arizona Housing Trust Fund — a pot of money derived from the state …

Leave money behind, attend Really Really Free Market – Des Moines Register
A nonprofit Des Moines group is planning a public marketplace that offers goods and services that are free. Really, free. No money will be exchanged for the goods and services available – and nothing will have a price tag – at the Really Really Free …

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The state of WA has spawned some of the world wide web’s biggest names. Even Bill Gates, the United States’ richest man, hails from Medina, WA and his company, Microsoft, is based in Redmond. Amazon.com, Classmates.com, Whitepages.com and Marchex also make WA their home. The fact then that more than one and a half million residents are owed more than 700 million dollars in unclaimed money in WA State is ironic, sense searching for unclaimed property and money can be done on the web from the comfort of their bedroom or the local Starbucks.

According to the WA State Dept. Of Revenue web site, typical unclaimed money includes abandoned insurance proceeds, bank accounts, bonds, stocks, safe deposit box contents, mutual funds, uncashed payroll, utility and phone company deposits, traveler’s checks, insurance, and other financial assets. Unclaimed property doesn’t include most tangible assets such as vehicles and real estate. State Law requires insurance companies, banks, credit unions, government entities, retailers, corporations, and utilities to turn WA unclaimed property and money over to the state if their owners can not be located after three to five years (depending on the item). The State’s Unclaimed Property Law states: “State law protects unclaimed property until it can be returned. There is no time limit for filing a claim and rightful owners or their heirs can claim property reported since 1955. The state may auction the content of safe deposit boxes, however, if not claimed within five years.”

WA was the very first state to have a streamlined system for claiming lost property and money. As a matter of fact, the WA State Dept. of Revenue recently received the Award for Outstanding Management and Organizational Initiative for its ‘Unclaimed Property E-Claim System’. The amount waiting to be reunited with their owners still exceeds 500 million dollars however, despite the unclaimed money program being implemented to seek out more owners of WA unclaimed money and that makes claiming easier for them.

The problem may lie in a handful of factors – the fast paced lifestyle we live in today, the idea people have that piles of paperwork are necessary when dealing with the government, and plain disbelief. The more people jump from spouse to spouse (changing last names), jump from job to job, change addresses, the more likely they are going to lose track of some of their financial assets like inheritances from a relative that had passed away or tax refunds from the IRS. Even people who are aware of the possibility that they could have unclaimed money in WA and other states might not bother performing a search at all thinking it’s not worth the effort.

The Unclaimed Property Division collects more than 55 million dollars in lost or abandoned assets each year in WA State and that amount snowballs with each passing year. Study up on all the various ways to search, how often to search, and where to search and get started finding money you could have coming ASAP! Who knows? For once, the government could owe you money this time instead of the other way around.

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$130,000 Lottery ticket unclaimed (The Daily Democrat)
The California Lottery is still on the lookout for a player who purchased a winning MEGA Millions ticket in Woodland one month ago and has yet to claim their prize.

Official faces inquiry over unclaimed cash – This is Sentinel
A SENIOR council official is facing investigation as part of a probe into why a claim for a £1.2 million rebate was delayed for two years. Alan Hudson, Newcastle Borough Council ‘s executive director of operational services, has been named by …

Lost money discovered during Randolph event – Southern Illinoisan
The state treasurer’s office has begun claims and inquiries that could return more than $60,000 in unclaimed money and property to 47 Randolph County residents. The process began April 14 during the state treasurer’s Cash Dash outreach event at the …

Leave money behind, attend Really Really Free Market – Des Moines Register
A nonprofit Des Moines group is planning a public marketplace that offers goods and services that are free. Really, free. No money will be exchanged for the goods and services available – and nothing will have a price tag – at the Really Really Free …

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I was searching the internet recently for the latest news and an article on modern day treasure hunters caught my eye. It appears that for some Americans who have metal detectors, looking for treasure in the FL Keys has turned in to more than a hobby and has made some serious money. Rusted antiques and occasionally gold and silver bullion from sunken Spanish galleons are just some of the finds. Very interesting news.

Burried treasures aren’t the only riches available for citizens hoping to go on a hunt for treasure though. After reading the article on treasure hunting scuba divers, I saw another news post about Alabama unclaimed money, stating that the state treasurer has recently given away as much as $23 million of it to the state’s residents in just one year’s time. Well really, the phrase ‘given away’ is kind of not accurate – ‘given back’ is the better verb to use as the Ala. missing money actually belonged to the people that received it in the first place. The large value of these assets given back may be due to the State Treasurer’s Unclaimed Money Program that attempts to heighten the awareness of residents about abandoned cash. Lists of the names of the owners of these funds are placed in public places like state fairs and shopping malls. Booths are also set up by employees of the Ala. Treasury Department’s Unclaimed Money Div. in these public places – providing free help in doing an Ala. search.

When residents relocate or find new jobs, they often lost track of assets such as stock dividends, uncollected salary checks, income tax refunds, etc. by not leaving a proper forwarding address. People also pass away without leaving a will and their assets are supposed to be given to their closest living relative who sometimes can’t be located due to a change of address or name. Items from contents of forgotten safe deposit boxes are also deemed unclaimed property under Ala. law. These items are passed along to the state after a ‘dormancy period’, which varies state to state. The dormancy period for unclaimed property in Ala. is five years for most types of financial assets and 1 year for salary checks. Items forgotten in safe deposit boxes are passed along to the state and are auctioned off to the public and the money is returned to the state treasurer’s office where it can still be claimed by the true owners at any time in the future.

According to Kay Ivey, Alabama State Treasurer, “We’ve still got $373 million that belongs to people in every nook and cranny in Alabama,” and she adds “Go online or call us, and if you find your name and you can prove you are who you say you are, my staff and I would love to send you a check.”

According to experts 70% of Americans are due a portion of the more than 35 billion dollars in unclaimed property, which is currently held by the individual Treasury Departments across the country in all 50 states. A citizen can have abandoned assets in several states if he or she has relocated a lot or if they have several relatives across the country. It’s important to do a thorough money search to keep from missing out on your lost cash.

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Government Might Owe You Money – KNx 1070
LOS ANGELES (KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO) — Congressman Brad Sherman has a link to a government list of unclaimed stimulus checks. CLICK BELOW To see if you are on the list of Los Angeles County residents who are owed tax money

$130,000 Lottery ticket unclaimed (The Daily Democrat)
The California Lottery is still on the lookout for a player who purchased a winning MEGA Millions ticket in Woodland one month ago and has yet to claim their prize.The ticket hit five of six winning numbers in the March 20 drawing, missing only the Mega number, and is worth $130,151.

Florida has $28M for child support, can’t find recipients (Orlando Sentinel)
Florida is sitting on that much money for child support but can’t find recipients At a time when Florida families increasingly struggle to pay bills, the state is sitting on $28 million in child-support payments that it has not distributed — largely because it can’t find the parents who are owed the money.

Talk About Travel: Great Smoky Mountains, Dublin, More (Washington Post)
Post travel editors and writers field questions and comments.

AZ homeless shelters get $771K – Arizona Daily Star
PHOENIX — Gov. Jan Brewer announced $771,000 in state grants to homeless shelters Thursday, with $50,000 going to help Pima County residents. The grants were provided through the Arizona Housing Trust Fund — a pot of money derived from the state …

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The most southern of the Dakotas may be home to the national treasure that is Mt. Rushmore, but ND is holding its own treasure that’s deserving of as much attention. According to the web site of the State Land Dept., there is currently in excess of $23 million in North Dakota unclaimed money, waiting to be reunited with the citizens who lost track of it some time in their lives. The primary thing standing between these people and their money, beyond knowing about the fact that these assets exist, is the know-how to track them down and claim them.

North Dakota Residents are blessed to reside in a state that ranks among the top five in the country for percentage of unclaimed funds given back to residents. At the same time, the state has one of the smallest populations in the country, at just over 640 thousand. What this means is that ND residents have excellent odds of discovering and claiming back assets that are rightfully theirs.

The primary rule of searching for unclaimed funds is to search often. One of the biggest mistakes searchers generally make is to search just once on the first web site they come to that has a search box and end their search there. This does not take in to account that the vast majority of abandoned assets websites do not have accurate data, and even the state’s official records are often slow to be updated. This is a problem, not only due to the fact that an employee in a state office has to physically add the record once it’s been handed to the state, but because there are different periods of time which must pass, unique to each kind of missing money, before they are turned over to the state.

Some of the more common types of abandoned assets are stocks, dormant savings and checking accounts, mutual funds, bonds, wages, refunds, salary, payroll, paid-up life insurance policies, money orders, commissions, deposits, death benefits, uncashed checks, insurance payments, dividends, and others. Most of those have dormancy periods of 1 to 5 years, which means that if it’s only been a year or two when a person searches; they will not find a record for an asset that has a dormancy period of 3 or more years.

On top of needing to search the correct sites often, many people do not realize that they should search records outside of ND. Believe it or not, a citizen could actually have not ever been outside of the state of ND, but have money owed to them in other states. this happens when assets from insurance companies or employers come from other states. Often times the actual corporate headquarters for for a company exists in a state other than where a particular employee works. Because of this, unclaimed properties being held by institutions in these situations will be passed along to the proper division of the company’s home state’s treasury department. What this means is that ND will never have any record of this cash, so a resident who hopes to locate and claim it would need to use the same search techniques in other states.

These are just a couple of the most common issues that plague the searches of uninformed ND citizens. But people can get over these issues, and a number of others, by spending just a little time educating themselves on the search practices used by experienced searchers before putting their own feet in the water.

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Need money? Check unclaimed funds – Mansfield News Journal
If your tax refunds are less than what you had hoped and you could use some more money, when was the last time you checked to see if you had any other money out there just waiting for you to claim it? The Ohio Department of Commerce’s Division of …

Government Might Owe You Money – KNx 1070
LOS ANGELES (KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO) — Congressman Brad Sherman has a link to a government list of unclaimed stimulus checks. CLICK BELOW To see if you are on the list of Los Angeles County residents who are owed tax money

Government Might Owe You Money (KNX 1070 Los Angeles)
LOS ANGELES (KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO) — Congressman Brad Sherman has a link to a government list of unclaimed stimulus checks. CLICK BELOW To see if you are on the list of Los Angeles County residents who are owed tax money.

You may have an unclaimed tax refund – Marketplace.publicradio.org
Bill Radke: If you’re rushing to finish your taxes today, much luck. A nice refund would be welcome. But did you know a lot of tax refunds go unclaimed? The government is sitting on tens of millions of dollars in uncollected refunds and economic …

Combs: It’s your money, ask for it! (Del Rio News-Herald)
Texas Comptroller Susan Combs urged residents of Del Rio and Val Verde County to research unclaimed property and money that may be owed them during her visit here Friday.

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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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Teague, Denish talk about federal stimulus funding for rural areas (Valencia County News-Bulletin)
Lt. Gov. Diane Denish and U.S. Rep. Harry Teague spoke to Valencia County residents last week to spread awareness about unclaimed stimulus money. Both officials spoke at two separate town halls Wednesday in Belen and Los Lunas to spread the word about funding access for rural communities.

Need money? Check unclaimed funds – Mansfield News Journal
If your tax refunds are less than what you had hoped and you could use some more money, when was the last time you checked to see if you had any other money out there just waiting for you to claim it? The Ohio Department of Commerce’s Division of …

Ohio must pay interest on unclaimed funds – Cincinnati.com
The Ohio Supreme Court has handed a little tax-season gift to thousands of people who have drawn money from the state’s unclaimed-funds account over the past 18 years. People who have received funds from the account since 1991 are entitled to …

Government Might Owe You Money (KNX 1070 Los Angeles)
LOS ANGELES (KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO) — Congressman Brad Sherman has a link to a government list of unclaimed stimulus checks. CLICK BELOW To see if you are on the list of Los Angeles County residents who are owed tax money.

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Have you ever loaned cash to an acquaintance, and because they were an acquaintance, you didn’t pester them about paying you back quickly? Then, as time went on, did you forget all about the money? Well, maybe you haven’t, but millions of Florida citizens do each and every year, only their “friends” are companies holding dormant savings and checking accounts, uncashed checks, interest dividends, utility deposits, to name a few.

After the companies and financial institutions lose contact with persons associated with these accounts, they turn them over to the state Department of Financial Services, and the funds, totaling hundreds of millions each and every year, become what is known as unclaimed money or unclaimed property. Florida unclaimed money never actually belongs to the state, but they are required to hold it until the rightful owner steps forward to claim it.

The process of turning that missing money in to found cash is easy if you know what you are doing. Many people make the mistake of searching only one time at some third party site that made inaccurate claims about its unclaimed property database. Many people only search FLA’s unclaimed money records. On top of that, one of the most common blunders people make time and time again, is only searching one time.

Searching only one time doesn’t factor in the fact that in accordance with varying dormancy periods on forgotten cash, these assets are turned over at different times. This means that if you attempt to search for unclaimed cash in FLA only today, but your funds haven’t been turned over to the state until the following day (or next week, month, or year), you’d never be able to find it. For that reason (among others), missing money searches should stay away from websites that charge “per search”.

Many people hunting for Florida lost assets simply do not recognize the fact that their cash might be in the hands of gov offices in states other than Florida. What if your insurance companies or a former employer’s corporate headquarters were in states other than Florida? When the dormancy periods expire, your unclaimed government money will be placed in the custody of those states, so digging through Florida missing money database would be pointless.

Even though FLA’s $1 billion is a massive amount, looking at the records of other states often is important in the Sunshine State in particular, because the state is home to so many people who came from other states. It is not a secret that FLA is home to an ever growing number of retirees, but most didn’t live there for their entire lives.

Even though FLA does you the courtesy of not putting any time limits on claiming your money, most people would obviously choose to have their money as soon as possible. Beyond that, if the cash belonged to a relative who had passed, the process of showing you’re the rightful heir can take a bit more effort than taking back your own forgotten funds, so it is of the utmost importance to get started ASAP.

Most people think it’s not possible for them to have ever abandoned or forgotten money, but you’d be surprised. In reality the majority of people are due some type of unclaimed money, so people owe it to themselves to get searching.

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Del. too reliant on revenue from gaming, critics charge (The News Journal)
The government could not pay its bills without the money legalized gambling pours into the state treasury, about $203 million this year

Forgotten money bears interest – The Columbus Dispatch
The Ohio Supreme Court has handed a little tax-season gift to thousands of people who have drawn money from the state’s unclaimed-funds account over the past 18 years. People who have received funds from the account since 1991 are entitled to …

Unclaimed funds? Now get interest – Cincinnati.com
Since the 1960s, the state has held in a trust fund millions of dollars from uncashed checks and dormant banking and other accounts. A 1991 amendment by the Legislature specifically stated that people who come forward for the unclaimed money cannot …

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The state of California’s unclaimed money program takes in about $300 million each year. Why does it matter to you? Well, if you or anyone you know is or was a resident of the Golden State (or ever had any type of business dealings, whether you knew it or not), part of that massive pile of CA forgotten funds could easily be yours!

Under the CA unclaimed property (or escheat) law, abandoned assets like forgotten savings and checking accounts, cash and stock dividends, mineral deposits, uncashed checks and money orders, state of California unclaimed tax refunds, salary checks, gift certificates, and other assets are handed over to the Treasury Department if their owners don’t come for them within a given time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies widely from state to state, but in CA it is three years. These unclaimed monies then get moved to the CA unclaimed property division, where they stay in the state’s general fund until they are returned to the rightful owners. This is where state employees who handled CA unclaimed cash were criticized recently. Seems that they were eager to track down and take hold of the lost assets from the various establishments holding them but showed less interest in contacting the owners in the CA unclaimed money list.

One of the primary reasons for the government’s inability give back forgotten money to its owners, they say, is that they can not be tracked down. The problem is, would would ever think that people like ZsaZsa Gabor, Angelina Jolie, Victoria Beckham, Gerri Halliwell, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Lopez, Adam Sandler and Marlon Brando would be difficult to track down? Those names and the names of a number of other celebrities are just a few of the names in the CA missing money database but they have not been contacted by the employees at the California Unclaimed Funds Division. They are all owed checks for unclaimed money by CA amounting from hundreds to the thousands in Ms. Jolie’s case. This just shows CA state officials’ interest in keeping this money 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 judge on CA abandoned cash, saying that the state wasn’t trying hard enough to locate the rightful owners and for a while halted the ability of the state to take and hold it until a new policy of returning it to the actual owners was adopted.

The total dollar amount for these funds in California averages five billion dollars annually – just imagine how much interest this accrues for the state! Sacramento attorney Bill Palmer who has battled in numerous cases involving California unclaimed money, has said that the state’s program was intended to be a lost and found of sorts for Californians. Sadly, it was turned into a profit generating ‘business’ in the past few years.

The ban on the taking of property by California has since been removed and the new California State Controller, John Chiang, is making extra efforts in the form of widespread changes in improving how his office deals with California unclaimed money. There is still a great need though for Californians and Americans in all states across the U.S. to learn about the presence of these properties and on how to do a thorough search for them and take back what belongs to them.

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Unclaimed funds? Now get interest (The Cincinnati Enquirer)
COLUMBUS – The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that taxpayers are entitled to interest when they recover unclaimed funds from the state.

Ohio must pay interest on unclaimed funds – Cincinnati.com
The Ohio Supreme Court has handed a little tax-season gift to thousands of people who have drawn money from the state’s unclaimed-funds account over the past 18 years. People who have received funds from the account since 1991 are entitled to …

Nearly $40M in Wisconsin Lottery prizes unclaimed – Chippewa Herald
APPLETON, Wis. – Wisconsin Lottery winners have failed to claim $38.3 million in prizes in the past 11 years and another $3 million will likely go unclaimed this fiscal year, spokesman Andrew Bohage said. Those figures don’t include unclaimed scratch …

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The state of California’s unclaimed money program takes in about $300 million each year. Why does it matter to you? Well, if you or anyone you know is or was a resident of the Golden State (or ever had any type of business dealings, whether you knew it or not), part of that massive pile of CA forgotten funds could easily be yours!

Under the CA unclaimed property (or escheat) law, abandoned assets like forgotten savings and checking accounts, cash and stock dividends, mineral deposits, uncashed checks and money orders, state of California unclaimed tax refunds, salary checks, gift certificates, and other assets are handed over to the Treasury Department if their owners don’t come for them within a given time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies widely from state to state, but in CA it is three years. These unclaimed monies then get moved to the CA unclaimed property division, where they stay in the state’s general fund until they are returned to the rightful owners. This is where state employees who handled CA unclaimed cash were criticized recently. Seems that they were eager to track down and take hold of the lost assets from the various establishments holding them but showed less interest in contacting the owners in the CA unclaimed money list.

One of the primary reasons for the government’s inability give back forgotten money to its owners, they say, is that they can not be tracked down. The problem is, would would ever think that people like ZsaZsa Gabor, Angelina Jolie, Victoria Beckham, Gerri Halliwell, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Lopez, Adam Sandler and Marlon Brando would be difficult to track down? Those names and the names of a number of other celebrities are just a few of the names in the CA missing money database but they have not been contacted by the employees at the California Unclaimed Funds Division. They are all owed checks for unclaimed money by CA amounting from hundreds to the thousands in Ms. Jolie’s case. This just shows CA state officials’ interest in keeping this money 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 judge on CA abandoned cash, saying that the state wasn’t trying hard enough to locate the rightful owners and for a while halted the ability of the state to take and hold it until a new policy of returning it to the actual owners was adopted.

The total dollar amount for these funds in California averages five billion dollars annually – just imagine how much interest this accrues for the state! Sacramento attorney Bill Palmer who has battled in numerous cases involving California unclaimed money, has said that the state’s program was intended to be a lost and found of sorts for Californians. Sadly, it was turned into a profit generating ‘business’ in the past few years.

The ban on the taking of property by California has since been removed and the new California State Controller, John Chiang, is making extra efforts in the form of widespread changes in improving how his office deals with California unclaimed money. There is still a great need though for Californians and Americans in all states across the U.S. to learn about the presence of these properties and on how to do a thorough search for them and take back what belongs to them.

Tags: , , california missing money, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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Bill aims to return unclaimed bond money to Vermonters (The Barre Montpelier Times Argus)
A bill in Congress could mean the return of as much as $31 million in matured unredeemed savings bonds to Vermonters. … – By BRUCE EDWARDS Rutland Herald STAFF

Nearly $40M in Wisconsin Lottery prizes unclaimed – Chippewa Herald
APPLETON, Wis. – Wisconsin Lottery winners have failed to claim $38.3 million in prizes in the past 11 years and another $3 million will likely go unclaimed this fiscal year, spokesman Andrew Bohage said. Those figures don’t include unclaimed scratch …

Unclaimed property tops $600 million (Tacoma Daily Index)
If you had a $100 rebate check, wouldn’t you cash it? If your employer owed you $200 in travel expenses, wouldn’t you claim it? Sure you would. What’s puzzling is the number of people who fail to seek out more than $600 million in unclaimed property that has piled up since the 1950s.

State seeks owners of money – Billings Gazette
CHEYENNE – The state’s Unclaimed Property Division is making its annual effort to find the owners of more than $30 million in unclaimed money. Nancy Russell, director of the Unclaimed Property Division, a branch of the state treasurer’s office, said …

State can’t hold interest on unclaimed funds, high court rules – Cleveland Plain Dealer Blog
COLUMBUS — Ohio cannot keep interest earned on unclaimed funds owed to taxpayers, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled today. Since the 1960s, the state has held millions of unclaimed checks and money from dormant banking accounts and placed the cash in a …

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