(Part 1 of 2)

In May 2007, IL State Treasurer State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias announced that the state's "Cash Dash" 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 find it.

Sadly beyond just IL, state treasury departments across the United States keep on taking in more unclaimed funds each year than they give back to the citizens. Because 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 that can be claimed nationwide. Even for those few who have realized the truth about unclaimed cash, the best way to track these monies down eludes them more often than not.

The Prairie is State is one of those rare states that holds over a billion dollars on its own, which means if you are a resident of IL then you have even greater odds of finding 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 lists 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. People who have had or know someone who may have had one of these types of accounts at one time or another is encouraged to search often.

(to be continued)

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