Ultimate Unclaimed Money Guide

Ultimate Unclaimed

Money Guide

How to Earn a Good Income by

Reuniting People with their Lost Money

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information

regarding the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the

publisher and author are not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other

professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the

services of a competent professional should be sought.

Some of the methods presented in this book may be illegal in certain parts of

the United States. This book is sold for informational purposes only.

Copyright ?2019 by Data Finder USA LLC. All rights reserved. Printed in the

United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in

any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief

quotations embodied in critical articles or review. For more information, write

419 E. Main St., Suite 300 Buffalo, Wyoming 82846

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Ultimate Unclaimed Money Guide

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Introduction

In the United States today, there is over $60 billion in unclaimed money sitting

dormant in state and federal Unclaimed Property office accounts. Some of the

monetary items that end up in a state's possessions after being declared

abandoned by the holding institution include:

Forgotten bank accounts

Uncashed stock dividends

Insurance payments

Safe deposit boxes

Utility deposits

Travelers checks

Money orders

Security deposits

Gift cards and certificates

And more¡­

People move away, lose track of investments, or die, and the accounts or funds,

after a set amount of time¡ªfrequently 3 to five 5 years¡ªare reported to the

state Treasurer's Escheats, Comptroller's, or Revenue office. The state then

tries to track down, the owners and return the money.

If you think financial property may be held by your state, the first step is to

contact the appropriate office (a state by state list follows) to find out whether

your name is listed. Or, in the case of the estate of a deceased person, the

listing would be under his/her name.

You will then fill out a claim form that you must return together with the

required identification or proof of ownership. Requirements for proving

ownership may vary according to the amount of the claim and the

complications involved, but frequently states will ask for such things as copies

of driver's licenses, social security numbers, bank account numbers and

passbooks. Most require that the information be notarized. A few states have

limitations on how long they keep abandoned property before turning it over to

state coffers, but most keep it indefinitely. Some also pay interest on the

money if the property was originally interest-bearing.

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Honest Finders vs. Vultures

According to expert David Epstein (unclaimed property attorney and founder

of the Unclaimed Property Clearinghouse), an estimated 1 in 10 people in the

United States have missing or abandoned property. But states do not have the

resources to investigate every case and do little more than advertise names of

owners in local newspapers. The resulting gap is sometimes filled by

professional "finders" or "heir searchers" who find the owners themselves and

charge a fee or commission in exchange for returning it. They can obtain lists,

legally in most cases but sometimes surreptitiously, of the names of the owners

from the state offices, then conduct their own search. Some finders have

charged commissions of 30% to 50%. The price of one finder¡¯s fee in a past

Colorado case was 30% of the dividends and ALL the shares of stock!

Finders can, however, perform a valuable service by reuniting people with

money that would have been lost to them forever. Because of cases where

these finders have charged excessive fees to people for returning their own

money, and because of the strain their demands have put on some already

overburdened state offices, finders have a shady reputation in some quarters.

One state office, for example, refers to them as "bounty hunters" and another

call them "vultures." Many state offices feel that the finders infringe on the

owner's right to have their money returned with no charge involved, which is

the goal of the state.

NAUPA (the National Association of Abandoned Property Administrators, the

main unclaimed property institution in the US) agrees that since the states

never find 100% of the owners, there is a place for honest finders. For example,

if a state is unable to locate the owner of a sizable property that they did not

know about, and a finder does the job, then a service has been performed.

Many states, such as Texas, limit the amount of commission a finder may

charge; and others have confidentiality laws that prevent them from aiding

finders in any way.

One of the major obstacles that states face is obtaining the cooperation of the

banks, insurance companies, and other institutions reporting properties to

them. Despite laws that govern how a holding institution should deal with

dormant accounts, they are often low priority items in a business. The states

sometimes used to have to work very hard to convince unclaimed fund holders

that they were best qualified to return the money. All 50 of the United States

have passed laws that penalize lax holding companies by charging them a fee.

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