Unclaimed Property Blog

This may seem strange but a woman living in Oregon finds money in Texas that belongs to a school district in Pennsylvania.

Wendy Lemmerman, 42, of Portland, Ore., checks Web sites listing unclaimed property to try to find money for charities.

Lemmerman recently found $35,000 that Texas was holding in unclaimed money for the Philadelphia School District . She sent an e-mail toThe Philadelphia Inquirer and the newspaper forwarded the tip to the district.

Neither the school district nor the Texas comptroller’s office supplied details of the origins of the unclaimed funds. The Inquirer reported that a district financial specialist, Jessica Diaz, said the money included two checks that apparently were rebates or refunds from the mid-1980s, one from Xerox Corp. and one from Dell Marketing L.P.

Steve Westly, CA State Controller, has a strict policy against the selling of hate materials. It was his office however that had auctioned such materials on an online auction.

Specifically, a batch of Adolf Hitler stamps that sold for $85 in April and a Nazi cross that sold for $80 in November.

A copy of “Mein Kampf” was recently pulled from the state’s Web site after a Sacramento TV station called attention to the Hitler manifesto.

The items are among the warehouses of valuables, which have gone unclaimed by their owners for more than three years, turned over to the state from safe deposit boxes.

Borrowing a page from the Iowa playbook, state officials in Nebraska and South Dakota are taking more measures to return forgotten property to residents.

Millions of dollars of unclaimed wages, stocks, gift certificates, telephone deposits and many other categories are the property of the people who own them. But in an increasingly mobile society, South Dakota Treasurer Vernon Larson said, people can’t be found to get back what is rightfully theirs once they’ve apparently forgotten about it.

Every now and then even a state wants to do some “spring cleaning”. In Maryland it was a bit early, but definitely beneficial to the state.

State Comptroller William Donald Schaefer announced that auction sales from 423 unclaimed property items, from abandoned safe deposit boxes, generated $86,500 on Saturday, February 4th.

The total appraised value of all items in the auction was $52,131. The single most valuable item purchased was a $3,400 diamond ring.

Proceeds from the auction go directly to the state’s general fund, which last year generated $24,232.03.

New law has banks and other institutions giving money to the state as unclaimed property

Passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reporting law and other changes in corporate governance have caused a large increase in the amount of “unclaimed property� money being collected by all 50 states, state treasurers said.

That means a growing number of Americans could collect large piles of money, if they only knew where to look. A Baton Rouge man recently learned that the state of Louisiana owes him about $750,000 in stocks and dividends from an investment account he had lost track of years ago.

Often you will see pop-ups on your screen regarding credit scores. You click on and you see FICO score, not credit score. What is this FICO? Is it a disease? Do I have it? Do I want to know if I have it?

It is not a disease. FICO is what the financial people refer to as your credit score. Guess they thought we would not figure that one out. FICO comes from a company that was started back in 1956 called Fair, Isaac Corporation. Fair Isaac was the creator of the credit scoring system. This system simply puts a number as your credit (FICO) score based on how good (or bad) you are at managing your debt.

CA State Controller, Steve Westly, in recent months has been going to different areas of the state announcing money to be given away. This is money that people have not claimed and was then turned over to the state as unclaimed property.

There have been stories on the internet and in newspapers of how difficult it is to find some of these people as they have not left any forwarding address. Hence, Mr. Westly traveling to different areas of the state looking for the owners.

A Miami news team is getting involved in giving away big money. If you are wondering if you may be one of the big money recipients, read on.

There is more than $1 billion in the state’s unclaimed property office. Some of it might be yours.

NBC 6’s Joel Connable reported that he has an entire list of people owed “big money,” from $10,000 to more than $100,000.

With a few clicks on a computer, NBC 6 found some owners. Alstene McKinney is one of those found owners. Her $43,000 was from an old employer, the Miami-Dade County School District. It was money from her pension that she never received.

Just like the Steelers, you could be a winner. Well actually you would be claiming what was turned over to the state as unclaimed property.

Each year the treasury department receives hundreds of millions of dollars in unclaimed property. It is responsible for finding the proper owners.

The bureau employs 121 full-time employees and six temporary workers, nearly a quarter of the 520 employees in the department.

The treasury department is custodian of unclaimed property — such as abandoned bank accounts, forgotten stocks, uncashed checks, certificates of deposit, life insurance policies, unredeemed gift cards and safe deposit boxes.

The department is obligated to carry the unclaimed property forever.

Steve Westlly the CA State Controller has been traveling through the state giving money away. He is the person possibly holding your share of California’s $4.8 billion worth of unclaimed property.

San Francisco residents were recently urged to check for unclaimed money as Controller Steve Westly continued a campaign urging residents to check whether the state is holding any of their money in the form of unclaimed property.

The state has $4.8 billion worth of bank balances and miscellaneous items whose owners could not be located after three years, according to the controller’s office.