(Part 1 of 2)

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

Sadly beyond just IL, state treasury departments across the country continue to take in more unclaimed money annually than they give back to the people. 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 nationwide. Even for the handful who have realized 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 is holding over 1 billion dollars on its own, and that means that if you're a resident of IL then you have even greater odds of locating a claim in your name, especially after you factor in that the state has less than 13 million people and there are more than 10 million names on the state's IL database.

Although there are many more, IL names 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 may have had one of these accounts at some point in the past is encouraged to search often.

The IL State Treasury has handed back over $432 million since it took control of the unclaimed money 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 all the time, the heap of cash will keep on growing.

(to be continued)

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