(Part 2 of 2)

One of the primary reasons for the government’s inability give back forgotten money to its owners, they claim, is the fact that they cannot 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 could be hard to locate? Their names and the names of a number of other celebrities are some of the names in the California missing money database but they haven’t heard from the employees at the California Unclaimed Funds Division. They are all owed checks for unclaimed money by California amounting from hundreds to the thousands as in the case of Angelina Jolie. This proves once again California state officials’ interest in keeping this cash 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 assets, saying that the state was not making enough of an effort to return it to its rightful owners and for a while halted the ability of the state to take and hold it until a proper method of returning it to the actual owners has been adopted.

The total amount of unclaimed money in California averages five billion dollars annually – imagine the amount of interest that generates for the state! Bill Palmer, an attorney in Sacramento who has battled in many cases involving California unclaimed property, said the state’s department was created to be a lost and found of sorts for Californians. Sadly, it was turned into a profit generating ‘business’ in recent years.

The ban on the taking of property by California has now been removed and the new California State Controller, John Chiang, is making extra efforts in the form of sweeping reforms in improving how his office is handling California unclaimed property. There is still a great need though for Californians and Americans in all states across the U.S. to be informed about the presence of these funds and on how to do a thorough search for them.

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