(Part 1 of 2)

In May of 2007, IL State Treasurer State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias announced that the state's "Cash Dash" program is holding roughly 1.4 Billion dollars 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 in addition to IL, state treasury departments across the country keep on taking in more unclaimed property annually than they give back to the rightful owners. Due to the fact that everyone believes in the old "if it's too good to be true" saying, most people refuse to believe that there are really tens of billions of dollars waiting to be claimed across the country. Even for those few who have learned the truth about unclaimed assets, the best way to track these monies down eludes them in most cases.

The Prairie is State is one of those rare states that holds over 1 billion dollars on its own, which means if you are a resident of IL then you have even better odds of finding 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.

Even though there are many more, IL names the following as the most common sources 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 one time or another is encouraged to search regularly.

The IL State Treasury has given back over $432 million since it took control of the unclaimed property 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 every year, the mountain of cash will keep on growing.

(to be continued)

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