(Part 1 of 2)

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

Sadly beyond just IL, state treasury departments across the nation continue to take in more unclaimed property every year than they return to the citizens. Due to the fact that everyone believes in the old "if it's too good to be true" saying, most people do not believe that there are really tens of billions of dollars that can be claimed across the country. Even for those few who have learned the truth about unclaimed assets, the best way to locate these monies 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, and that means that if you're a resident of IL then you have even greater odds of locating a claim in your name, especially when you consider that the state has just under 13 million people and there are over 10 million names on the state's IL database.

Even though there are quite a few more, IL names the following as the most common sources 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 might have had one of these accounts at some point in the past is encouraged to search regularly.

The IL State Treasury has given back over $432 million since it took over the unclaimed property program in 1999, $84 million of which was returned in 2006 alone, but with $1.4 Billion waiting to be claimed and more coming in every year, the pile of cash will continue to grow.

(to be continued)

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