(Part 1 of 2)

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

Sadly in addition to Illinois, state treasury departments across the country continue to take in more unclaimed funds every year than they give back to the people. Because everyone believes in the old "if it's too good to be true" saying, most people refuse to believe that there are truly tens of billions of dollars waiting to be claimed nationwide. Even for the handful who have realized the truth about unclaimed assets, the best way to find these monies eludes them in most cases.

The Prairie is State is one of just a few states that is holding over 1 billion dollars on its own, and that means that if you are a resident of Illinois then you have even greater odds of tracking down a claim in your name, especially after you consider that the state has less than 13 million people and there are more than 10 million names on the state's Illinois database.

Even though there are quite a few more, Illinois 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. Anyone who has had or knows someone who may have had one of these accounts at one time or another is encouraged to search often.

The Illinois State Treasury has given back over $432 million since it took over the unclaimed funds program in 1999, $84 million of which was given back in 2006 alone, but with $1.4 Billion waiting to be claimed and more coming in every year, the mountain of cash will keep on growing.

(to be continued)

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