(Part 1 of 2)

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

Sadly beyond just Illinois, state treasury departments across the nation continue to take in more unclaimed funds annually than they return to the rightful owners. Because 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 that can be claimed nationwide. Even for the handful who have learned the truth about unclaimed assets, the best way to locate these monies eludes them most of the time.

The Prairie is State is one of just a few states that holds over 1 billion dollars on its own, which means if you're a resident of Illinois then you have even better odds of locating 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 Illinois database.

Even though there are many more, Illinois lists the following as the most common types of missing money: unpaid wages or commissions, abandoned savings and checking accounts, bonds, stock, un-cashed dividends, mutual funds, credit balances, customer deposits or overpayments, safe deposit box contents, money orders, refunds, paid-up life insurance policies, travelers checks. Anyone who has had or knows someone who might have had one of these types of accounts at some point in the past is encouraged to search often.

The Illinois State Treasury has given back over 432 million dollars since it took over the unclaimed funds program in 1999, 84 million dollars of which was given back in 2006 alone, but with 1.4 Billion dollars 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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