(Part 1 of 2)

The state of California’s unclaimed property program takes in about 300 million dollars each year. What’s it to you? Well, if you or anyone 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), a chunk of that big heap of CA lost assets might easily belong to you!

Under the state of California unclaimed property (or escheat) law, abandoned assets 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 handed over to the Department of the Treasury if their owners don’t locate them within a given period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies widely from state to state, but in CA it is three years. These forgotten funds then head to the CA unclaimed property div, where they wait in the state’s general fund until returned to their rightful owners. This is where state employees in-charge of the CA unclaimed cash were criticized recently. It appears that they were eager to locate and take hold of the lost assets from the various establishments holding them but but were less than enthusiastic about locating the actual owners in the CA unclaimed property database.

One of the primary reasons for the inability of government give back forgotten money to its owners, they claim, is that they can’t be located. The problem is, who would think people like ZsaZsa Gabor, Angelina Jolie, Victoria Beckham, Gerri Halliwell, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Lopez, Adam Sandler and Marlon Brando could be difficult to track down? Those names and the names of several other famous people are just some of the names in the CA missing money database and yet they haven’t heard from the officials in the California Unclaimed Funds Division. They’re 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 employees’ interest in keeping this money in the general fund for them to balance the budget deficit for as long as they can. As a matter of fact, there was recently a ruling by a judge on CA abandoned money, stating that the state wasn’t trying hard enough to locate the rightful owners and for a while halted the state’s s ability to take and hold it until a new policy of reuniting it with the rightful owners was enacted.

(to be continued)

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Unclaimed $115m held by NSW government (Sky News Australia)
NSW residents are urged to check if they are entitled to any of the $115 million in unclaimed money held by the state government.

County treasurer: Your money may be waiting (Abilene Reporter-News)
The Taylor County treasurer’s office might be aware of some money belonging to you that you don’t even know about. There are more than 16,000 residents or businesses in the county that have a combined $5.7 million in unclaimed funds, county Treasurer Lesa Hart Crosswhite announced earlier this week in a news release. That means about one out of every seven county residents has money waiting for …

Call to check on ‘forgotten money’ (BigPond News)
NSW residents are urged to check if they are entitled to $115 million in unclaimed money.

Do you have an unclaimed IRS check? – Norman Transcript
More than 1,100 Oklahomans have unclaimed Internal Revenue Service refund checks waiting to be delivered, 65 of those in Cleveland County. The IRS said the checks were mailed out to recipients but were returned as “undeliverable.” The agency said …