(Part 1 of 2)

The state of California’s unclaimed money department takes in about three hundred million dollars every year. What’s it to you? Well, if you or someone you know is or ever was a resident of the Golden State (or had any kind of business dealings, whether you knew it or not), some of that massive pile of California forgotten funds might easily be yours!

Under the CA unclaimed property (or escheat) law, abandoned assets such as forgotten checking and savings accounts, uncashed checks and money orders, mineral deposits, salary checks, cash and stock dividends, state of California unclaimed tax refunds, gift certificates, and other assets are passed along to the Treasury Department if the rightful owners don’t come for them within a certain time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies widely from state to state, but in California it’s 3 years. These unclaimed monies then go to the California unclaimed property division, where they stay in the state’s general fund until they’re returned to the people they truly belong to. This is where officials working for the state who handled California unclaimed cash were recently criticized. It seems that they were eager to track down and collect the lost funds from the various establishments holding them but but were less than enthusiastic about tracking down the owners in the California unclaimed property records.

One of the primary reasons for the government’s inability give back forgotten cash to residents, they claim, is that they cannot be located. The issue 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 difficult to locate? Their names and the names of several other famous people are some of the names in the California missing money database and yet they haven’t been contacted by the employees in the California Unclaimed Funds Division. They are all owed checks for unclaimed money by California ranging in amount from hundreds to the thousands as in the case of Angelina Jolie. This just proves California state employees’ interest in keeping this money in the general fund for use in balancing the budget deficits for as long as they possibly can. As a matter of fact, there was a recent ruling by a judge on CA abandoned cash, saying that the state was not making enough of an effort to locate the rightful owners and for a while halted the state’s s ability to seize it until a proper method of returning it to the actual owners has been adopted.

(to be continued)

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Are You Owed Money From the Government? – WETM-TV

Are You Owed Money From the Government? WETM-TV, NY - Oct 30, 2008 The New York State Comptroller's Office is holding about $9 billion in unclaimed funds, and some of that money could belong to you. …

IRS struggles to give money away (KWWL Iowa)
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) – The Internal Revenue Service has money to give away – no, seriously. The IRS says 276 people living in the Sioux City area have money waiting for them – either an economic stimulus check, a tax refund, or both. So far, though, the money has gone unclaimed.

IRS wants to return money (The Pasadena Citizen)
This time it’s a good thing. The Internal Revenue Service is looking for hundreds of area residents. It has millions of dollars in unclaimed money for Texans and the IRS is looking to give those taxpayers their due.