(Part 2 of 2)

One of the primary reasons for the government’s inability to return forgotten money to the people it belongs to, they claim, is that they can’t be tracked down. Problem is, who would think that people like Angelina Jolie, ZsaZsa Gabor, Gerri Halliwell, Victoria Beckham, Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, Adam Sandler, Marlon Brando and Jennifer Lopez would be difficult to track down? Their names and the names of a number of other celebrities are just a few of the names in the Cali missing money database but they haven’t been contacted by the employees at the California Unclaimed Money Division. They are all owed checks for unclaimed money by Cali amounting from hundreds to the thousands in Ms. Jolie’s case. This just proves Cali state officials’ interest in holding this money in the general fund for them to balance the budget deficit for as long as they can. In fact, there was recently a ruling by a federal judge on CA abandoned cash, saying that the state was not doing enough to return it to its rightful owners and for a while halted the ability of the state to seize it until a new policy of reuniting it with the actual owners was enacted.

The total dollar amount for these funds in CA averages $5 billion annually – imagine the amount of interest that accrues for the state! Bill Palmer, an attorney in Sacramento who has fought in a number of cases involving California unclaimed property, has said that the state’s department was created to be a lost and found for California residents. Instead, it has been turned into a profit making ‘business’ in the past few years.

The hold on the taking of property by CA has since been lifted and the new California State Controller, John Chiang, is making extra efforts in the form of widespread reforms in improving how his office is handling CA unclaimed money. There is still a dire need though for Californians and residents of all other states across the U.S. to learn about the presence of these funds and on how to do a thorough search for them and take back what belongs to them.

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Money, property part of annual auction – Columbus Telegram
LINCOLN — The annual Internet auction of Nebraska unclaimed property begins today. About 200 items left in unclaimed safe deposit boxes, including gold and silver coins, Confederate currency, diamond jewelry and Husker memorabilia, will be auctioned …

State attorney general on tour to reunite Hoosiers, their stuff – Evansville Courier-Press
Arthur Harte’s wallet is thicker today thanks to his daughter. On Wednesday, he received a check for about $300 from Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller on behalf of the Web site www.indianaunclaimed.com . His daughter regularly checks the Web site …

Bringing back Indian money in tax havens (The Hindu)
Public perception has remained strong of domestic money being stashed away illegally in Switzerland

Tenn. Morgues Filled With Unclaimed Bodies – News4Jax.com
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The economic downtown is making things complicated for some in death. In the past year, the number of unclaimed bodies in Nashville morgues has nearly doubled because families can’t scrape together the money to bury them. The …