(Part 1 of 2)

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

Sadly in addition to IL, state treasury departments across the United States keep on taking in more unclaimed funds each year than they return to the rightful owners. Because everyone believes in the old "if it's too good to be true" saying, most people do not believe that there are really tens of billions of dollars waiting to 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 those rare states that holds over 1 billion dollars on its own, and that means that 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 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 lists the following as the most common types of forgotten funds: 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 regularly.

(to be continued)

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