(Part 2 of 2)

One of the main reasons for the inability of government to return forgotten cash to the people it belongs to, they say, is that they can not be located. The problem is, who would think people like Angelina Jolie, ZsaZsa Gabor, Gerri Halliwell, Victoria Beckham, Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Marlon Brando and Jennifer Lopez could be hard to find? Those names and the names of several other celebrities are just some of the names in the CA missing money database and yet they have not been contacted by the officials in the California Unclaimed Funds Division. They’re all owed checks for unclaimed money by CA ranging in amount from hundreds to the thousands in Ms. Jolie’s case. This just proves CA state employees’ interest in holding this cash in the general fund for them to balance the budget deficit for as long as they possibly can. In fact, there was recently a ruling by a federal judge on CA abandoned money, saying that the state was not making enough of an effort to return it to its 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 rightful owners was enacted.

The total dollar amount for these funds in CA averages five billion dollars annually – imagine the amount of interest that earns for the state! Bill Palmer, an attorney in Sacramento who has fought in a number of cases involving CA unclaimed money, said the state’s program was supposed to be a lost and found for residents of California. Instead, it was turned into a profit generating ‘business’ in the past few years.

The hold on the taking of property by CA has now been removed and the new California State Controller, John Chiang, is making greater efforts in the form of widespread changes in improving how his office handles California unclaimed property. There is still a dire need though for residents of California and the other 49 states across the U.S. to be informed about the presence of these monies and on how to do a thorough search for them.

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