(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 roughly 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 knowledge to track it down.

Sadly beyond just Illinois, state treasury departments across the country keep on taking in more unclaimed money each year than they hand 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 truly tens of billions of dollars waiting to be claimed nationwide. Even for the handful who have come to accept the truth about unclaimed cash, the best way to locate these monies eludes them in most cases.

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

Although there are many more, Illinois 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. Anyone who has had or knows someone who might have had one of these accounts at some point in the past is encouraged to search often.

(to be continued)

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