(Part 1 of 2)

The state of California’s unclaimed money program takes in about 300 million dollars every 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 were aware of it or not), some of that big pile of Cali unclaimed money could very well belong to you!

Under the state of California unclaimed property law, missing money 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 handed over to the Department of the Treasury if their owners don’t come for them within a given time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies from state to state, but in Cali it’s three years. These unclaimed monies then get moved to the California unclaimed property division, where they sit in the state’s general fund until returned to their rightful owners. This is where officials working for the state in-charge of the Cali unclaimed cash were recently criticized. It appears that they were eager to track down and collect the lost assets from the various establishments holding on to them but showed less interest in tracking down the actual owners in the Cali unclaimed property database.

One of the primary reasons for the government’s inability give back forgotten cash to residents, they say, is the fact that they cannot be tracked down. Problem is, would would ever 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 hard to track down? Their names and the names of several other famous people are some of the names in the Cali missing money list but they haven’t been contacted by the employees at the California Unclaimed Money Division. They are all owed checks for lost assets by Cali amounting from hundreds to the thousands as in the case of Angelina Jolie. This just proves Cali state employees’ interest in holding this cash in the general fund for them to balance the budget deficit for as long as they can. As a matter of fact, there was a recent ruling by a federal judge on CA abandoned money, stating that the state wasn’t making enough of an effort to locate the rightful owners and has temporarily halted the ability of the state to take and hold it until a better policy of reuniting it with the rightful owners has been adopted.

(to be continued)

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Personal Finance: Finding unclaimed money – Sacramento Bee
Our recent story on hunting for long-lost money from the state controller’s office struck a chord. The call volume from Californians looking for billions in unclaimed property – everything from utility refunds to forgotten bank accounts or stock …

Unclaimed $10K piece of paper sat on family’s windowsill (Telegraph-Journal)
Santa Claus must have had to carry an extra sack for Steven and Dorothy Connick, just to hold the extra $10,000.

Millions Go Unclaimed At State Treasury – WISN.com
State Treasurer Dawn Marie Sass is in Milwaukee trying to match unclaimed property with its rightful owners. She said the money has been untouched for five years or more, some of it dating back to the early 1970s. “Our statutes say that we can never …

Unclaimed bail money headed to state coffers – Providence Journal
PROVIDENCE — Many have done their time and paid their fines, but for whatever reasons the former suspects neglected to claim bail money they posted when they first appeared in court. The courts this week will turn over $746,276 in unclaimed bail …