(Part 1 of 2)

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

Sadly in addition to IL, state treasury departments across the nation continue to take in more unclaimed money each year than they hand back to the rightful owners. 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 really tens of billions of dollars that can be claimed across the country. Even for the handful who have come to accept the truth about unclaimed cash, the best way to find these monies eludes them more often than not.

The Prairie is State is one of just a few states that holds over 1 billion dollars on its own, and that means that 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 over 10 million names on the state's IL list.

Although there are quite a few more, IL lists the following as the most common types 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 may have had one of these accounts at one time or another is encouraged to search regularly.

(to be continued)

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