(Part 1 of 2)

In May of 2007, IL State Treasurer State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias announced that the state's "Cash Dash" program currently holds nearly 1.4 Billion dollars in Illinois unclaimed money. The only thing standing between the cash and its rightful owners is the knowledge that it's out there and the knowledge to find it.

Sadly beyond just IL, state treasury departments across the country keep on taking in more unclaimed funds every year than they hand back to the people. 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 truly tens of billions of dollars that can be claimed nationwide. Even for the handful who have come to accept the truth about unclaimed cash, the best way to track these monies down eludes them more often than not.

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

Even though there are many more, IL names the following as the most common types of forgotten funds: 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 may have had one of these accounts at some point in the past is encouraged to search regularly.

The IL State Treasury has handed back more than 432 million dollars since it took over the unclaimed funds program in 1999, $84 million of which was returned in 2006 alone, but with 1.4 Billion dollars waiting to be claimed and more coming in all the time, the heap of cash will continue to grow.

(to be continued)

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Personal Finance: Finding unclaimed money – Sacramento Bee
Our recent story on hunting for long-lost money from the state controller's office struck a chord. The call volume from Californians looking for billions in unclaimed property – everything from utility refunds to forgotten bank accounts or stock …

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