(Part 1 of 2)

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

Sadly in addition to IL, state treasury departments across the United States keep on taking in more unclaimed property annually than they return to the people. 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 really tens of billions of dollars that can be claimed across the country. Even for the handful who have learned the truth about unclaimed assets, the best way to locate these monies eludes them in most cases.

The Prairie is State is one of those rare states that holds over a billion dollars on its own, which means if you're a resident of IL then you have even greater odds of tracking down 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 IL database.

Although there are quite a few more, IL names the following as the most common sources of forgotten funds: 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. People who have had or know someone who may have had one of these types of accounts at some point in the past is encouraged to search regularly.

(to be continued)

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