I was bored at the office last week when I heard a radio ad about reclaiming money that has been turned over to the state until a claim was made.
I looked up the local department of the Treasury and every person in the vicinity had a claim to be made for them or their family. The low was $15 and I have $200 that I never expected coming in the mail.
No, this isn’t a scam. Google your state Department of the Treasury. The chance that you or someone know are owed money is astounding. All you have to do is sign a form and scan a drivers license. I also picked up some ones from distant family members that are probably really significant.
This has been a public service announcement from Shagnasty.
I did this several years ago for the various states we have lived in.
Some stuff isn’t all that helpful. There’s one from way back for someone with the same name as Mrs. FtG but I don’t think it’s her.
Found one for a relative: a savings account set up when their we are child. Something like $50. I forwarded the info on, turned out the original passbook was found, etc. But they decided it wasn’t worth it to go thru the forms and all.
So, it is sort of an adventure.
(BTW there was some site that had links to all the states’ sites, so that helps. Not sure what it is and I worry about Googling and linking to a scam site.)
Some of my coworkers balked when they got an e-mail form back saying that they were owed something like $60. That seemed like too much work to them. I pointed out that is way over more than an hour of pay for them. All they had to do was get off their ass, sign something and scan a drivers license. Some of them did it and others didn’t. That is telling.
I may be a personal quirk but I am not one to turn down free money especially if it was bequeathed inadvertently by my past self. I will happily sign a form just to give myself a $200 gift.
Some scammy law firm in Kansas tried to get us to hire them to recover “lost” funds. Too bad for them that the wife is a whiz at stuff like this. We found (and recovered) better than $3K this spring.
Some years back, I did a similar search and found what appeared to be money due to my mom’s uncle. I passed the info on to her, but I don’t know what became of it. I’ll check again, but I’ll be surprised if there’s anything. Still, it won’t hurt to look.
I just found $800.00 odd dollars I left in a bank account from a business I closed in 1990. I still haven’t filled out the paperwork to collect it. Thanks for reminding me.
There was a time, some years ago, when I was richer than I thought I was.
Then somebody I know randomly googled my name just to see what would happen, and discovered that the state had some money waiting for me. It turned out to be about $2000 IIRC.
So I was able to collect that.
And then I was no longer richer than I thought I was, but only merely just as rich as I thought I was.
Year, they do this in California, too. They make it seem as though only they can get the money. Then they charge people 10% or something like such to fill out paperwork that anyone can do.
The frustrating thing about this unclaimed money is that–in California, at least–it can be nearly impossible to know where the money actually came from. I got about $5,000, once but I could never figure out where it had originally come from. Just some bank I’d never done business with was holding it in my name.
There ought to be. I deserve it, and there have been situations where people definitely owe me money that I never followed up on (because I was reassured they would do the following up for me) and it never eventuated.
But no, there persists an absence of surprise cash.
I’ve been getting letters from one of these unclaimed money companies saying that my late father had money in his name somewhere, but darned if I can find it on my own. I suppose I could go ahead and have them find it for me and pay their 15%, probably better than letting it languish in the government’s hands.
I just checked our state’s unclaimed funds site, and there are two items listed under my name and address which seem for real. So I am mailing in the claim form.
If this works out, it’d be the first time that being a Doper actually translated into money.*
Anyway, thanks to Shagnasty.
*over the years, it could work out to 0.0047 cents for every hour I’ve spent here.
