(Part 1 of 2)

In May 2007, Illinois State Treasurer State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias stated that the state's "Cash Dash" abandoned asset program currently holds almost 1.4 Billion dollars in Illinois unclaimed money. The only thing getting between the cash and its rightful owners is the knowledge that it's out there and the knowledge to locate it.

Sadly beyond just Illinois, state treasury departments across the country continue to take in more unclaimed funds annually than they give back 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 refuse to believe that there are really tens of billions of dollars that can be claimed across the country. Even for those few who have come to accept the truth about unclaimed properties, the best way to track these monies down eludes them most of the time.

The Prairie is State is one of those rare states that holds over a billion dollars on its own, and that means that if you are a resident of Illinois then you have even greater odds of tracking down a claim in your name, especially when you factor in that the state has less than 13 million people and there are over 10 million names on the state's Illinois database.

Even though there are many more, Illinois names the following as the most common types of missing money: abandoned savings and checking accounts, unpaid wages or commissions, stock, bonds, mutual funds, un-cashed dividends, customer deposits or overpayments, credit balances, refunds, money orders, travelers checks, paid-up life insurance policies, safe deposit box contents. Anyone who has had or knows someone who may have had one of these accounts at some point in the past is encouraged to search regularly.

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

(to be continued)

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