(Part 1 of 2)

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

Sadly in addition to Illinois, state treasury departments across the United States keep on taking in more unclaimed money each year 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 do not believe that there are truly tens of billions of dollars waiting to be claimed nationwide. Even for the handful who have come to accept the truth about unclaimed assets, the best way to find 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 are a resident of Illinois 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 Illinois list.

Even though there are many more, Illinois lists the following as the most common types 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. 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 frequently.

The Illinois State Treasury has given back over 432 million dollars since it took over the unclaimed money 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 heap of cash will continue to grow.

(to be continued)

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