(Part 1 of 2)

In May of 2007, Illinois State Treasurer State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias announced that the state's "Cash Dash" abandoned asset program currently holds almost $1.4 Billion in Illinois unclaimed money. The only thing getting between the cash and its true owners is the knowledge that it's out there waiting to be claimed and the ability to track it down.

Sadly beyond just Illinois, state treasury departments across the country keep on taking in more unclaimed funds annually than they return to the rightful owners. Due to the fact that everyone believes in the old "if it's too good to be true" saying, the majority of people do not believe that there are truly tens of billions of dollars waiting to be claimed across the country. Even for those few who have realized the truth about unclaimed assets, the best way to locate these monies eludes them more often than not.

The Prairie is State is one of only a few states that holds over a billion dollars on its own, and that means that if you're a resident of Illinois then you have even better odds of locating a claim in your name, especially after you factor in that the state has just under 13 million people and there are more than 10 million names on the state's Illinois database.

Although there are quite a few more, Illinois lists the following as the most common sources of missing money: unpaid wages or commissions, abandoned savings and checking accounts, bonds, stock, un-cashed dividends, mutual funds, credit balances, customer deposits or overpayments, safe deposit box contents, money orders, refunds, paid-up life insurance policies, travelers checks. Anyone who has had or knows someone who might have had one of these types of accounts at one time or another is encouraged to search often.

The Illinois State Treasury has handed back more than $432 million since it took over the unclaimed funds program in 1999, 84 million dollars of which was given back in 2006 alone, but with $1.4 Billion waiting to be claimed and more coming in all the time, the pile of cash will continue to grow.

(to be continued)

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