Posts Tagged “unclaimed cash”

Despite recent efforts to return missing money to citizens of SC that lead to a record monthly return of $900,000 in September, according to NBC Augusta, the state of South Carolina’s Palmetto Payback Program is still holding $200 million of the citizens hard earned dollars. It seems that no matter what efforts are made, the state still takes in more South Carolina unclaimed money each year than it pays out to the people.

Sadly, we consistently find that most people are simply unaware of the phenomenon of unclaimed property, and when many people are told, they believe it must be a scam. I mean, if you didn’t already know it was real, and someone tried to tell you that there are tens of billions of dollars sitting in government offices waiting to be discovered, you’d probably be skeptical too.

Lucky for you, if you’re reading this, then you’re probably aware of the beauty of SC unclaimed money already. Now the only thing standing between you and claiming your funds is the knowledge to thoroughly search for lost assets in S. Carolina, to ensure you’ve explored all possible claims owed to you.

Enter UnclaimedMoney.net. Put your mind at ease as you step in to the world of unclaimed money, by beginning your search with expert assistance so confident in your satisfaction, you’re backed by a fully money back guarantee.

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An increasing number of states having lost money coffers totaling over a billion dollars, and North Carolina isn’t far behind with a pile of $700 Million currently being held by the NC Office of the State Treasurer. Give it a couple more years of more money coming in than being returned to citizens, and N. Carolina will pass that billion dollar mark.

WRAL recently covered the story, and zeroed in on the found money success of one lucky North Carolina unclaimed money searcher:

Cary – Do you know where all your money is? A lot of us think we do, but North Carolina is holding $700 million in unclaimed cash. That means a lot of people are wrong when they think they’ve kept tabs on all their cash.

Bill O’Connor didn’t know he had more than $4,000 in unclaimed cash until WRAL’s 5 On Your Side called him. The money came to be after he invested in the stock market.

Poor Bill was skeptical of NC unclaimed money due to the hearing about so many internet scams. Sadly, with every success story you almost always have the person who found money saying they were hesitant at first:

“The first thing is I didn’t know if it was real or not. I’ve heard of different Internet scams and things like that, so I just wanted to make sure the source was, you know, really who it was,” he said.

Some people will use their slice of the Carolina cash pie to splurge on something, go on vacation or pay off bills. It seems that the money couldn’t have come at a more important time for Mr. O’Connor:

“It was a shock. Especially at a time when I could use the money,” he said.

With unclaimed funds in N. Carolina literally approaching $1 billion, there’s a good chance you’re due a claim… but if you don’t know how to search for unclaimed money the right way, you could wind up chasing your tail. UnclaimedMoney.net is here to help!

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KSPR reporter Joe Daues is latest to become hip to the heaps of Missouri unclaimed money:

They call it Missouri’s largest lost and found. A half billion dollars in money that belongs to people like me and you. It’s being held by the state of Missouri until the rightful owners or heirs claim it.

Scott Harper is the director of Missouri’s Unclaimed Property Division. His staff keeps track of nearly $500-million that Missourians have lost track of.

“It could be life insurance, uncashed payroll checks, utility deposits,” he says. “The fastest growing area of unclaimed property is securtities- mutual funds, stocks, and securities related property.”

The article also explains a bit about how MO unclaimed money works:

The state gets the money after 5 years if a bank or a company hasn’t paid you the money it owes you or can’t locate you… the law requires them to hand it over to the state.

To sum up, we’re talking about HALF OF A BILLION DOLLARS in missing money, that most Missourians are simply unaware of, and those that are owed a claim generally lack the knowhow to find it.

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As if the HALF A BILLION DOLLARS in Washington unclaimed money wasn’t enough, the state is about to take in another $100 Million, according to a recent article on the website of NBC affiliate KHQ.

This first excerpt from the article is a perfect example of why I can’t stress the search tip “search often”, enough:

Businesses are required to report unclaimed paychecks, deposits, refunds, escrow proceeds and similar items to the Department by Nov. 1 of each year, and the Department received a substantial amount this year, Unclaimed Property Manager Patti Wilson said.

Now, what if you’d searched at any point this year before Nov. 1. Even October 31. The State of Washington would have no record of your missing money. Worse, they’re so buried by accounts being turned over, that even today, November 21, your claim wouldn’t be reflected in the state’s records. And of course if your account hasn’t been dormant long enough, it may not be added to the database until next year. Again, “search often” is rule #1 in this game.

Now for the juicy stuff:

“We’re still processing it all, but we expect it to total close to $100 million involving 500,000 or more names,” she said.

And that’s on top of $500 million owed to more than 3 million people already in the searchable online database.

Essentially this means that unclaimed money in Washington will total $600 MILLION!!! And the best part is, with a population of less than 6.5 million, the odds are more likely that you’re owed money than not!!! (Especially when you consider that only 4.8 million are adults, and we’re looking at roughly 3.5 million being owed unclaimed property!!!)

If somehow those odds don’t motivate you, perhaps some unclaimed money success stories from regular folks will wake you up:

It pays to keep checking. Bruce Bleckert of Tacoma recently received $4,035 on two claims. He had checked for unclaimed property previously under his name, but these claims were under his wife’s name. Virginia Hanson of Woodinville received $2,226 from a Midwestern financial bank related to an escrow for a home, and Kymberlee Elliott of Vancouver got $188 from a company where she had once worked.

The article closes with a record return stat – “$39.4 million to more than 82,000 claimants in fiscal year 2007“.

There’s no reason you won’t be part of the stat for 2008, especially given the odds!

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A recent case study by The Plain Dealer revealed that it’s often easier to locate abandoned funds than it is to actually claim them in Ohio.

The 3 page article is a must read for anyone getting serious about finding Ohio Unclaimed Money, so I’m hesitant to excerpt anything, for fear of leaving something else out, but I suppose a few important take aways would be:

Although the law requires companies to turn over inactive accounts to the state for safekeeping, the Ohio Department of Commerce isn’t a big stickler about the identifying information those companies have to send along with it.

The less information there is, the harder it can be to claim the money.

Yaw Obeng, director of the Division of Unclaimed Funds, said your father’s account was shipped to the state with the bank’s name, your father’s name and no other information, not even an address.

You can’t really blame the state for not wanting to waltz into a family feud by giving the money to the wrong relative.

The article goes on to explain how they were able to help this 81 year old man claim money his father had forgotten about before dying in the 1970s. The process involved digging up a lot of decades old obituaries and records proving residency.

The moral of this little story is that you need to be a diligent record keeper or you’ll be going on a wild goose chase to obtain your OH unclaimed money.

At any rate, this particular story had a happy ending – The old fella was able to claim the $596 owed to his father, with 32 years interest which amounted to $1,100! Congratulations Myron “Mike” Stern of Richmond Heights!

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Think you’ve got all the time in the world to find your Idaho unclaimed money? Think again!

While most of the 50 states will hold your missing money until you or your heirs claim it, Idaho only gives you 10 years. Of course even in other states, there’s no sense in letting the government hold your money, but in Idaho you’ve really got to get moving.

Via Idaho’s own State Tax Commission:

Most states act as custodians of your property, holding the property indefinitely until you or your heirs claim it. However, Idaho takes permanent ownership of the property if it has not been claimed within 10 years from the date the property was turned over to the state. At that time, those who were listed as owners, and the heirs of those owners, will lose all rights to that property.

At first, 10 years seems like plenty of time… But consider how old most sources of lost government money really are. If you forgot about these funds in the first place, odds are it was some time ago.

The bottom line is that unclaimed property in Idaho does come with an expiration date, so you owe it to yourself to search today!

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This is a new one – A limited time call in program for California missing money, hosted by a local television station and the State Controller (yes, California has a “controller”, as opposed to a “comptroller”, like other states have). Sadly I didn’t hear about it until today, so if you didn’t already get in on it, you missed it by about 24 hours. KCRA, via Yahoo!, reports:

To find out if you’ve got unclaimed property being held for you, Call 3 is teaming up with the Unclaimed Property Division of the State Controller’s Office for a Call 3 Call-In on Tuesday, Nov. 13. Phone lines will be open from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. for questions. Call 916-447-2255.

Luckily there’s no time limit on UnclaimedMoney.net’s system. In fact you’ll get INSTANT ACCESS to a step by step unclaimed property search guide, backed up with a MONEY BACK GUARANTEE.

Not only will you be able to search for unclaimed money in CA and across the nation whenever you want, as many times as you want, but you’ll also learn about methods for locating lost money that most unclaimed funds sites don’t tell you about.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for any future “Call 3 Call-Ins”, to assist you in your search for unclaimed funds in California.

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The news out of Louisiana hasn’t been great over the past couple of years, but the one silver lining for LA residents is unclaimed property. The Louisiana State Treasury is currently holding more than $330 MILLION dollars that belong to everyday folks. Or if you like the sound of it better, a total of a third of a BILLION dollars.

The Advocate reported on all that Louisiana unclaimed money today:

When Nick Saban comes to Baton Rouge in November 2008, he could swing by the state treasury to pick up his $1,278 in unclaimed property.

Saban’s money, from 35 shares of White Oak Grove Stock Fund, is among the more than $330 million in unclaimed property in the care of the state Treasury Department.

The article went on to tell how much was returned just this year:

Almost $50 million has been returned to Louisiana residents in fiscal year 2007, according to a treasury news release.

Keep in mind that while $50 million was returned, tens of millions are added to the unclaimed funds database EACH YEAR. The missing money just keeps piling up, as only a small slice of the pie is claimed each year, and more is added all the time.

State Treasurer John Kennedy is quoted in the article, and explains LA unclaimed money this way:

Unclaimed property comes to the treasury from payroll checks never cashed, abandoned bank accounts, oil and gas royalties, insurance proceeds and unclaimed deposits, Kennedy said.

“People move more today,” Kennedy said. “We’re living in a much more mobile society.”

These days it seems like unclaimed money in Louisiana is going out to people of all stripes. Kennedy has returned stacks of cash to both celebrities and unsuspecting regular people:

Kennedy once returned $1,600,000 to a retired New Orleans schoolteacher whose husband bought some securities without telling her before his death.

There’s a good chance you’re owed some of these unclaimed funds, but the only way to know for sure is to perform a thorough search with the assistance of veterans in the found money game.

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The state of Missouri is seeking the rightful owners of MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in unclaimed money. Last year, more than $22 million in Missouri unclaimed money was returned to its rightful owners, and that’s only the beginning!

As with most states, the folks have trouble accepting the reality of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars owed to them. This is one of the primary reasons that despite tens of millions of dollars in unclaimed money being returned, that’s just a fraction of how much is yet to be claimed.

KMBC in Kansas City recently explored Missouri unclaimed property, with a special look at unclaimed assets in abandoned safe deposit boxes. KMBC’s report ended:

Flink reported that the Web sites are constantly updated. Last year, Missouri gave back $22 million to rightful owners. In Kansas, more than $11 million was given back. But Kansas has $188 million still unclaimed.

That’s almost $200 million in unclaimed funds yet to be returned in Kansas, and although they don’t provide a dollar amount, we can safely assume that there’s even more in Missouri, based on the fact that MO gave back twice what Kansas did last year, and the amount returned is always tiny in comparison to what isn’t claimed.

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Unclaimed Money isn’t just for those living in the contiguous 48! That’s right, Hawaii’s Department of Budget and Finance is currently seeking the rightful owners of HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars in unclaimed property, but according to the Honolulu Advertiser, taking back your Hawaii unclaimed money is often easier said than done:

Hawai’i's unclaimed property program says it wants to return $130 million of forgotten bank accounts, checks, stocks and other assets to their rightful owners.

But some people who’ve applied for the funds say they’ve been denied payment because they couldn’t prove they lived somewhere two decades ago or couldn’t prove they were the intended recipient of a check the state possesses.

The article reports on a number of personal HI unclaimed money stories, detailing the difficulties folks have had in taking back money that belongs to them.

Many people are having trouble proving their identity, while others are running in to verification problems upon learning that the companies that turned the unclaimed funds over to the state, no longer exist.

The main lesson learned from the article, is that we should all keep records. This sounds like common sense to a lot of people, but you’d be surprised how many people keep virtually no records.

There are other things you can do that will give you an edge in your unclaimed money search. Aside from having proper ID and diligently keeping records, you should learn how to search both online and off-line, as well as learn how to search for pre-escheat missing money. Pre-escheat cash is money that has yet to be turned over to the state (so they have no record of it) but it’s still out there in unclaimed property limbo.

As you can see from the chart below, most unclaimed money remains in the hands of the Hawaiian government because these stumbling blocks have kept a lot of missing money from turning in to found money:
hawaiigraph.GIF

Click here to learn how to perform a thorough search for unclaimed money in Hawaii.

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