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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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--frequently 3 to five 5 years--are 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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