(Part 1 of 2)

The California’s unclaimed funds department takes in about three hundred million dollars annually. What’s it to you? Well, if you or someone you know is or ever was a resident of the Golden State (or ever had any type of business dealings, whether you knew it or not), part of that big heap of CA forgotten funds might very well belong to you!

Under the California unclaimed funds law, lost money like 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 turned over to the Department of the Treasury if their owners don’t locate them within a given time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies from state to state, but in CA it is three years. These unclaimed monies then get moved to the California unclaimed property div, where they sit in the state’s general fund until returned to the rightful owners. This is where officials working for the state in-charge of the CA unclaimed cash were recently criticized. It appears that they were all to happy to track down and take hold of the lost assets from the various establishments holding on to them but but weren’t so keen on locating the actual owners in the CA unclaimed money database.

One of the main reasons for the inability of government to return forgotten cash to its owners, according to the government, is that they can’t be tracked down. Problem is, who would think that people like Jennifer Lopez, Victoria Beckham, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Angelina Jolie ,Marlon Brando, Keanu Reeves, ZsaZsa Gabor and Gerri Halliwell could be hard to track down? Their names and the names of several other celebrities are some of the names in the CA missing money list and yet they haven’t been contacted by the employees in the California Unclaimed Money Division. They are all owed checks for lost assets by CA amounting from hundreds to the thousands as in the case of Angelina Jolie. This just proves CA state officials’ interest in keeping this cash in the general fund for them to balance the budget deficits for as long as they possibly can. As a matter of fact, there was recently a ruling by a federal judge on CA abandoned money, stating that the state was not doing enough to locate the rightful owners and has temporarily halted the state’s s ability to take and hold it until a proper method of reuniting it with the rightful owners was enacted.

(to be continued)

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Project Economy: Find Out If You Have Unclaimed Money – Pittsburgh Channel
The commonwealth’s unclaimed property fund has a total of about $1.5 billion — including $72 million in Allegheny County alone — that you either forgot about or never knew about, like inactive bank accounts, uncashed paychecks, CDs, utility …

Area cities have ‘unclaimed property’ coming their way – San Bernardino County Sun
Despite the recession and a monstrous deficit, there’s a lot of money lying around at the state level. Literally, billions. Referred to as “unclaimed property,” over $5 billion worth is being held by the office of State Controller John …

Who has unclaimed cash? You might. – Peoria Journal Star
The lines were long at The Shoppes at Grand Prairie. But these people weren’t waiting to spend their money Saturday. They were hoping to get it back. Cash Dash, part of the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office Unclaimed Property Division, offered …

Leave no retirement plan unturned in search of unclaimed money – New York Daily News
Nobody likes to leave money on the table, yet an estimated 58,000 people have left an average of $2,600 in old retirement plans. “Sometimes people don’t even realize that they have a benefit,” said Spiro Preovolos , director of operations at …

Movers & Shakers (Coeur d’Alene Press)
On July 1 about $1.7 million of Idaho’s unclaimed money goes to the state’s general fund. And some of that money could be yours.