(Part 1 of 2)

In May of 2007, Illinois State Treasurer State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias announced that the state's "Cash Dash" program currently holds nearly 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 in addition to Illinois, state treasury departments across the nation continue to take in more unclaimed money annually than they hand back to the citizens. Due to the fact that everyone believes in the old "if it's too good to be true" saying, most people refuse to believe that there are really tens of billions of dollars waiting to be claimed across the country. Even for the handful who have realized the truth about unclaimed assets, the best way to find these monies eludes them most of the time.

The Prairie is State is one of those rare states that holds over 1 billion dollars on its own, which means if you're a resident of Illinois then you have even better odds of finding a claim in your name, especially when you consider that the state has less than 13 million people and there are more than 10 million names on the state's Illinois list.

Although 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. People who have had or know someone who may have had one of these accounts at one time or another is encouraged to search often.

The Illinois State Treasury has returned more than $432 million since it took control of the unclaimed money program in 1999, $84 million 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 keep on growing.

(to be continued)

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