(Part 1 of 2)

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

Sadly beyond just Illinois, state treasury departments across the United States continue to take in more unclaimed property 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 those few who have realized the truth about unclaimed assets, the best way to find these monies eludes them more often than not.

The Prairie is State is one of only a few states that is holding over a billion dollars on its own, which means if you're a resident of Illinois then you have even greater odds of locating 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.

Although there are quite a few more, Illinois names the following as the most common sources 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. 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 frequently.

The Illinois State Treasury has handed back more than 432 million dollars since it took control of the unclaimed property program in 1999, 84 million dollars 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)

–

Short Shelf Life For SD Lotto Ticket
Time is running out for a Wild Card 2 lotto ticket worth $5,000.

Hundreds of millions of court fines are not collected from criminals, NAO report says
Hundreds of millions of pounds in fines imposed by courts on criminals are not being collected, an official report has found.

Kovalchuk remains unclaimed
Word drifts around the NHL that Russian scoring star asking for too much money and too many years on a contract

State reps coming to Angelica to help you find out
Hornell, N.Y. Theres $9.9 billion in unclaimed funds in New York, waiting to be had. Finding out if any of it belongs to you is just a mouse click away.

Bizarre crimes from Charlotte police files
By Ryan Pitkin Not The Time: Two police officers filed a report on a trespassing suspect for threatening them after being arrested. In the report, the officers stated that the man was being processed at intake when he told them, "If I ever see you on the street again I'm going to beat the goddamned hell out of you." It sounds like an oxymoron, but I suppose if anywhere is damned by God, it would …