(Part 1 of 2)

In May 2007, IL State Treasurer State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias stated that the state's "Cash Dash" program currently holds roughly $1.4 Billion in Illinois unclaimed money. The only thing getting between the cash and its true owners is the knowledge that it's out there waiting to be claimed and the ability to locate it.

Sadly beyond just IL, state treasury departments across the country keep on taking in more unclaimed funds every year than they return to the citizens. Because 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 across the country. Even for the handful who have come to accept the truth about unclaimed assets, the best way to find these monies eludes them in most cases.

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

Even though there are quite a few more, IL lists the following as the most common types of missing money: unpaid wages or commissions, abandoned savings and checking accounts, bonds, stock, un-cashed dividends, mutual funds, credit balances, customer deposits or overpayments, safe deposit box contents, money orders, refunds, paid-up life insurance policies, travelers checks. Anyone who has had or knows someone who might have had one of these types of accounts at one time or another is encouraged to search frequently.

(to be continued)

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