(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 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 country continue to take in more unclaimed money each year than they give back to the citizens. Due to the fact that everyone believes in the old "if it's too good to be true" saying, the majority of people do not believe that there are really tens of billions of dollars waiting to be claimed nationwide. Even for those few who have learned the truth about unclaimed cash, the best way to track these monies down eludes them most of the time.

The Prairie is State is one of those rare states that holds over a billion dollars on its own, which means if you're a resident of IL then you have even better odds of tracking down a claim in your name, especially after you consider that the state has just under 13 million people and there are over 10 million names on the state's IL database.

Although there are many more, IL lists the following as the most common types of missing money: 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 might have had one of these accounts at some point in the past is encouraged to search regularly.

(to be continued)

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