(Part 1 of 2)

In May of 2007, Illinois State Treasurer State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias stated that the state's "Cash Dash" abandoned asset program is holding nearly $1.4 Billion in Illinois unclaimed money. The only thing standing between the cash and its true owners is the knowledge that it is out there waiting to be claimed and the knowledge to locate it.

Sadly in addition to Illinois, state treasury departments across the nation continue to take in more unclaimed funds each year than they give back to the people. Due to the fact that everyone believes in the old "if it's too good to be true" saying, most people do not believe that there are truly tens of billions of dollars that can be claimed nationwide. Even for those few who have come to accept 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 those rare states that is holding 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 sources of forgotten funds: credit balances, customer deposits or overpayments, safe deposit box contents, money orders, refunds, paid-up life insurance policies, travelers checks, unpaid wages or commissions, abandoned savings and checking accounts, bonds, stock, un-cashed dividends, mutual funds. People who have had or know someone who might have had one of these accounts at some point in the past is encouraged to search often.

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

(to be continued)

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Census jobs available in Siouxland (Sioux City Journal)
SIOUX CITY — At a time of lousy economic conditions, hundreds of federal government jobs are going unclaimed in Northwest Iowa.

Unclaimed Money Found At West Milwaukee Starbucks – WISN.com
table border=0 width= valign=top cellpadding=2 cellspacing=7trtd valign=top class=jfont style=font-size:85%;font-family:arial,sans-serifbrdiv style=padding-top:0.8em;img alt= height=1 width=1/divdiv class=lha href=http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=Tct=us/8-0fd=Rurl=http://www.wisn.com/news/18377149/detail.htmlcid=1287747913ei=SWl6SYvuCMjcmQfUlMnpCQusg=AFQjCNH7ee_WsyD_rpTvFetNetUhXX9yNAbUnclaimed Money/b Found At West Milwaukee Starbucks/abrfont size=-1font color=#6f6f6fWISN.com,nbsp;WInbsp;-/font nobrDec 29, 2008/nobr/fontbrfont size=-1West Milwaukee police said someone left the bmoney/b inside the Starbucks Coffee near National Avenue and Miller Park Way earlier this month. b…/b/font/div/font/td/tr/table

Lost property returned in record amounts – The Reporter
table border=0 width= valign=top cellpadding=2 cellspacing=7trtd valign=top class=jfont style=font-size:85%;font-family:arial,sans-serifbrdiv style=padding-top:0.8em;img alt= height=1 width=1/divdiv class=lha href=http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=Tct=us/7-0fd=Rurl=http://www.fdlreporter.com/article/20090102/FON0101/901020420/1985cid=1289140022ei=SWl6SYvuCMjcmQfUlMnpCQusg=AFQjCNFobHS7omFJlAyAE5pPom3yh8GAxQLost property returned in record amounts/abrfont size=-1font color=#6f6f6fThe Reporter,nbsp;WInbsp;-/font nobrJan 2, 2009/nobr/fontbrfont size=-1Under Wisconsin law, after one to five years of inactivity, Wisconsin businesses are mandated to turn all bunclaimed money/b, stock and safe deposit boxes to b…/b/font/div/font/td/tr/table

Unclaimed Money and Free Makeup – Associated Content
table border=0 width= valign=top cellpadding=2 cellspacing=7trtd valign=top class=jfont style=font-size:85%;font-family:arial,sans-serifbrdiv style=padding-top:0.8em;img alt= height=1 width=1/divdiv class=lha href=http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=Tct=us/1-0fd=Rurl=http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1404304/unclaimed_money_and_free_makeup_.htmlcid=1295029256ei=SWl6SYvuCMjcmQfUlMnpCQusg=AFQjCNFX6tPNvCQWguarffzaxlpbs9dSpQbUnclaimed Money/b and Free Makeup/abrfont size=-1font color=#6f6f6fAssociated Content,nbsp;COnbsp;-/font nobrJan 20, 2009/nobr/fontbrfont size=-1This bunclaimed money/b is usually owed t o taxpayers who fail to take all the tax exemptions to which they are legally entitled, leaving a lot of free bmoney/b b…/b/fontbrfont size=-1a href=http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=Tct=us/1-1fd=Rurl=http://www.gastongazette.com/news/tax_29497___article.html/credit_money.htmlcid=1295029256ei=SWl6SYvuCMjcmQfUlMnpCQusg=AFQjCNEdu0el8jp2mjg5EKQyrHgAfmd4CA‘Come and get the bmoney/b/a font size=-1 color=#6f6f6fnobrGaston Gazette/nobr/font/fontbrfont class=p size=-1a class=p href=http://news.google.com/news?ie=UTF-8oe=utf-8rls=org.mozilla:en-US:officialclient=firefox-atab=wnncl=1295029256hl=ennobrall 3 news articles/nobr/a/font/div/font/td/tr/table