(Part 1 of 2)

The state of California’s unclaimed money department takes in roughly 300 million dollars every year. What’s it to you? Well, if you or anyone you know is or was a resident of the Golden State (or had any kind 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 state of California unclaimed property law, lost 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 turned over to the Treasury Dept. if their owners don’t come for them within a given time period. This ‘dormancy period’ varies widely from state to state, but in CA it’s three years. These abandoned assets then head to the California unclaimed property division, where they sit in the state’s general fund until they are returned to the people they truly belong to. This is where state officials in-charge of the CA unclaimed cash were recently criticized. Seems that they were eager to locate and collect the lost funds from the establishments holding them but but weren’t so keen on tracking down the actual owners in the CA unclaimed property records.

One of the primary reasons for the inability of government give back forgotten cash to the people it belongs to, according to the government, is the fact that they can’t be located. Problem is, would would ever think people like ZsaZsa Gabor, Angelina Jolie, Victoria Beckham, Gerri Halliwell, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Lopez, Adam Sandler and Marlon Brando would be hard to locate? Their names and the names of several other famous people are just some of the names in the CA missing money list and yet they have not been contacted by the employees at the California Unclaimed Funds Division. They are all owed checks for forgotten funds by CA amounting from hundreds to the thousands as in the case of Angelina Jolie. This just shows CA state officials’ interest in keeping this cash in the general fund for use in balancing the budget deficits for as long as they possibly can. In fact, there was a recent ruling by a judge on CA abandoned assets, stating that the state was not 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 proper method of returning it to the rightful owners was adopted.

(to be continued)

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