I received a letter in the mail from The Stage of Florida Department of Financial Services. The letter claims that I have what they’re calling “unclaimed funds”. The letter refers me to a website. I enter my name and i’m told that 3 items are in my name. Two from a escrow company, one from EBay.
To claim the funds in taken to a page that asks standard information such as name and address, but then I see it asks for my social security number. Alarm bells start going off so I do a Google search and it sends legit. There are news stories saying this is a program run by the State.
I’m still not convinced. The website is FLTreasureHunt.org Anyone know if this is legit or a scam?
I suspect that you will find they want 40% or so as their fees. A friend in the UK was contacted by some similar company about an unclaimed inheritance. Not life changing, but useful; they wanted 40% and he took the view that since he would have nothing without them, 60% was better than nothing.
That’s one of the things I was thinking. However, details about the program I’ve found online say that anyone asking for a finders fee was definitely a scam. This appears to be an official State of Florida program.
I’ll call tomorrow as I’m stil leary about entering my SS number online.
Seems to work like it does here. If you claim directly from the state it’s free but money finders (i.e parasites) can trick you into claiming through them.
You were right to be suspicious, but there is at least one legitimate use of the social security number in these circumstances. Quite likely more than one use.
At least one reason for requiring a social security number is to help distinguish you from someone else who may share your name. The state isn’t going to put social security numbers on the publicly searchable database, but they can match you up once you submit a claim.
My sister has a rather unusual name and our family name is quite rare. I assumed, quite wrongly, that her name was entirely unique. When I saw her name listed on a state’s unclaimed funds website I let her know. It was showing as some sort of utility deposit from a town where I know she lived while she was in college.
I told my sister about this and she checked it out, only to realize that this was not her funds and there was someone out there with her exact name who had lived in this same small college town.
I watched one episode of a BBC series Heir Hunters described someplace as “focusing on attempts to find missing or unknown heirs, entitled to deceased people’s estates before the British Treasury lawfully collects the money.”
It was not obvious to me as to how the ‘Heir Hunters’ benefited from their efforts. Would someone her explain how they get paid for their efforts?
Many states have a site like this. My brother ran a search and told me I had some money available. Many years ago when It was younger, but I think I had sold a car and moved at the same time. When I got settled in the new place I got a different car with a different insurance company and the old insurance company owed me a couple hundred dollars from my previous policy. Contacted the lost money site and got a surprise check.
Businesses that owe you money for legitimate business reasons are not allowed to just keep the money when they can’t find you, they have to put in a ‘good faith’ effort to give you the money. Using one of these state sponsored sites covers their good faith attempt to reunite you and probably a small amount of money that you would otherwise have forgot about or just let go.
In the case of Bona Vacantia cases, the “no one found” list, see https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/unclaimed-estates-list ,
the heir doesnt have to pay the heir hunter anything. If the hunter contacts an heir, then the heir is able to say “thank you for informing me, I’ll make the claim directly to the Bona Vacantia myself !”.
But in other estates, the executor or family seeking probate or someone, may be searching in order to get their hands on their inheritance without delay or contest. The attempt may protect them from further claims - the executor has to follow due diligence… what they can reasonably do. So they employ an heir hunter, which is a contract between estate and the hunter… the estate pays.
I’ve looked up neighbor’s names in the Florida database website and, when I found they had money coming (I don’t think it says how much), let them know. Almost all of them decided it was a scam, no matter what assurances I could show them online. Perhaps it says something about human nature – conditioned to be overly cautious, maybe.
I’ve gotten notices like that, or else people have seen my or my late husband’s name on the lists and (helpfully) called me. In every case, the amount has been around $5.00. Dang.