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I own an independent research and recovery company that audits government databases searching for entities that have lost track of recoverable money held in unclaimed money funds. My experience in this area allows me to shed light on this subject that very few people truly understand.Misconceptions and misunderstandings regarding unclaimed money matters are widespread. Perhaps the biggest misconception is the false belief that all unclaimed money is turned over and held by the 50 states. The truth is there are many THOUSANDS of OTHER unclaimed money funds nationwide that are NOT in any way controlled by state governments, a fact you will never read when you visit the state unclaimed money websites to search for your money.Unfortunately, because the money is scattered throughout thousands of separate escrow accounts, many difficult to find or almost totally hidden from view, there can be no nationwide or even statewide database of all unclaimed money as it would require a huge army of workers to create and update one. Yes, there are websites as listed below where you can check if anybody owes you money but the sites are normally linked only to the big state funds because those funds are easy to find, not to the hard-to-find local funds where most of the big, life-changing money is held. At my company we never audit the big state funds because they are so well publicized. Rather, we focus on local asset recoveries where it's very unlikely the lawful claimants would ever discover their unclaimed money without our assistance.To visit a few websites where you can check for unclaimed money, click the following links:Ways to find, save & make money!https://www.missingmoney.comUnclaimed Money from the GovernmentNationwide Unclaimed Property SearchIn California the big state fund can be searched at UCP Inquiry System. A simple Google search will locate the big state fund in your area.If you don't find your money on those sites, or even if you do find some money, you should NOT assume no agency elsewhere is holding your money because it's possible you do have money languishing in one of the local or federal funds. MOST IMPORTANTLY, if you are ever contacted by a money recovery company that informs you that you, your company or your organization is entitled to claim funds, don't assume it's a scam or ripoff and take no action as most people do. It takes only a few moments of research to visit a company's website and Google a company's name to determine if the company is legitimate. Ripoffs almost always involve advance payments so if the company that contacted you is not asking for money in advance, has a contingency fee that is reasonable and will pay all their own expenses, they are not trying to rip you off. The real "rip-off" is run by government agencies who confiscate billions of dollars of our unclaimed money every year with almost no adverse publicity, as I explain below.I must stress that unclaimed money is very real and many people have the right to claim life-changing money, not just the tiny utility deposits and dormant bank accounts that predominate on the big state funds. I estimate there's at least $100 billion languishing in unclaimed money funds nationwide. This money is owed to many tens of millions of entities and the total excludes all the countless billions that have already been confiscated. One hundred billion dollars is much more money than the net worth of the richest person on earth. Shockingly, much of this money is confiscated permanently by the holding agencies and deposited into their general funds through a legal process called escheatment because the rightful claimants failed to find the money or file valid claims to recover their money before a deadline. In our business we call this "Cash in the Trash". Incredibly, in many cases the rightful claimants had been contacted many times by recovery services and informed of the forfeiture but they took no action to stop it. In fact, this failure to act is one of the primary reasons why so much money has accumulated in the funds. The most frustrating aspect of our efforts at Cash Recovery Now is the refusal of many people to recognize that mistakes are made and as a result large amounts of money are transferred to unclaimed money funds where the money often remains for years, even AFTER people have been informed it's there!I'm constantly shocked and disappointed by people who hang up on my phone calls and trash my letters without asking any questions or doing any research to determine if my service is legitimate. Returning money to its rightful owners shouldn't be that difficult but it is! Here are some of the reasons why it's so hard to reunite people with their money:1. People are guided by the adage, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" so they ignore the notifications they receive. People would be better served if they listened to best-selling author Richard Carlson who wrote, “The old adage, 'If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is' isn't always correct. In fact, the suspicion, cynicism, and doubt that are inherent in this belief can and does keep people from taking advantage of excellent opportunities".2. Because of disingenuous statements issued by state government officials, most people believe there's only one unclaimed money fund in their state so when they don't find any money at their state's website, they take no action because they conclude the notification letter they've just received from a money recovery company is a scam.3. On the unclaimed money databases we audit we find not only individuals but also partnerships, large and small corporations, churches, LLCs, deceased persons, police departments, law firms, hospitals, physicians, trustees, government agencies, banks, title companies, insurance companies, private organizations and many more. These entities have gatekeepers who answer the phones and open the mail who are reluctant to pass along the free notifications to their bosses for fear that they are scams so it's very difficult to reach the decision makers in the organizations who have the authority to act.4. In our mobile society, tracing claimants is very challenging, even with all the online tools that are available, because many agencies refuse to provide the addresses or phone numbers of their claimants, citing privacy concerns. Often we're given only the claimant's name and the amount of money they have the right to claim. If the name is a common one like John Smith or Jose Gonzalez, the search is almost impossible. If your name is unusual, you actually have a much better chance of finding your money!5. Accountants are notoriously difficult to convince that they've lost money so if you receive a phone call or letter about unclaimed money that you have the right to claim, passing the matter along to your accountant for "investigation" will seldom lead to the recovery of your money. Most accountants don't ever want to receive a phone call or letter from a client informing them that they might have lost track of tens of thousands of dollars of their client's money and no accountant wants to call his client to say, "That guy claims we lost track of $50,000 of your money. He also claims the money has been buried in some unpublicized unclaimed money fund for several years and will be confiscated after a deadline. He's requesting a $7,500.00 fee to claim and recover the money".It's been my experience, when accounting firms do any recovery company research at all, it's often cursory so no action is taken and the money remains in the fund until it's discovered later or confiscated. Somehow accountants find a way to convince themselves the notifications aren't real because if they are legitimate, they'll appear incompetent, even reckless, to their clients when they report the missing money so they normally don't respond to the notifications they receive, not even a preliminary e-mail or phone call to the recovery company. Their clients or bosses never complain about the huge losses they suffer through escheatment because they never learn about them. I know this will infuriate many accountants but the fact is if all escheatment lists ever get published and business owners and other entities finally discover all the billions of dollars the government agencies have confiscated from them over the years due to their accountant's failure to perform due diligence, their accounting firms and the insurance companies who cover them will be on the hook for billions.6. Many people assume that if any government agencies are holding their unclaimed money, the agencies will make the effort to contact them directly, especially if they are easy to find. Unfortunately, the agencies are not required by law to trace claimants and rarely do so no matter how easy they may be to locate. After all, why should the agencies be expected to go to extraordinary lengths to trace and contact claimants when statutes entitle them to collect interest from the unclaimed assets as long as the money remains under their control and escheat the money after the deadline has passed? It's not that they can't find claimants. They aren't looking for the claimants! They do return the funds to the rightful claimants if they receive a totally valid and complete claim from them before the deadline but no government employee is assigned the task of tracing and contacting the individual claimants. The simple truth is the holding agencies who escheat profit enormously when claims are NOT made so they often do no more than the law requires.7. Many people fail to find and recover their unclaimed money because they place too much faith in misleading, incomplete or uninformed statements issued by state government officials, financial "experts" and even the Better Business Bureau, as I discuss in great detail below.Here's what California State Treasurer John Chiang has written about unclaimed money:"In California, unclaimed property or lost money is the responsibility of the State Controller's Office. Questions regarding unclaimed property should be directed to the SCO."The complete truth is, in California, SOME unclaimed money is the responsibility of the State Controller's Office but there are hundreds of unclaimed money funds within California that are NOT administered by the State of California and you will not see any type of disclaimer on the State Controller's unclaimed money website to notify people of that fact.The elected officials nationwide who issue these statements may not be trying to mislead claimants but the net result of their words is the false perception that no money is owed to people who aren't listed on their state's unclaimed money website so there's no need for people to look elsewhere for their money or pay contingency fees to companies who claim they've found their money.Many elected officials also play down the difficulties of the claim process which encourages many people to file their own claims without assistance which results in many claims that are denied that would have been approved had they been filed by a professional.On April 14, 2015, the Better Business Bureau published the following warning about unclaimed fund retrieval services:"It is essential to know that you do not need a third party to collect your funds, all the information is accessible free of charge by searching the state databases or by contacting any state unclaimed property office."If you do a Google search for "unclaimed funds in California", the page with this dire warning will appear first at the top of the page so many thousands of people have read it and have been guided by its advice, with absolutely tragic consequences.All the information about unclaimed money is NOT accessible by searching the state databases. The BBB fails to mention all the money controlled by the local governments, not to mention the billions of dollars languishing in several hundred federal unclaimed money funds.In addition, by warning claimants against retrieval services without balancing their warning with positive comments, the BBB has also chosen to ignore the difficulties of the claim process itself which, again, encourages many people to file their own claims. The claim process is often time consuming, difficult, confusing and frustrating because the agencies, to prevent fraud, have rules and procedures in place that must be researched thoroughly and followed to the letter to assure the money is recovered only by the rightful claimants. As a result of the BBB's advice, once again many claims are denied that would have been approved had they been handled by a professional because successful claims require considerable knowledge, experience and persistence.The gist of the BBB's unbalanced warning seems to be that because some people have been cheated or treated unfairly, all what they mislabel as mere "retrieval services" are unnecessary, serve no useful purpose and should be avoided. The truth is the research and recovery efforts of unclaimed money specialists has benefited countless claimants who would never have found or recovered their money without their efforts.If you contact your attorney or local police department to report you've received a letter or phone call notifying you that you have recoverable money in an unclaimed money fund, I predict you'll probably receive one of the following responses from them:A. "Take the letter and throw it into the trash. It's just a ripoff to separate you from your money."B. "The company that sent you the letter may be legitimate but you don't need them to recover your money. If you really do have unclaimed money, you can find and claim the money easily at the unclaimed money website of the state in which you live."The sad fact is, if you or your company have a large amount of money languishing in an unclaimed money fund somewhere, the biggest obstacle you may face in recovering your money is the well intentioned advice of the friends, relatives and advisors you trust the most.8. Most broadcasts about unclaimed money that I have seen are very disappointing. Rather than focusing on the local funds which hold most of the big dollar amounts, they almost always guide viewers to the big state websites. I know it's "natural" to interview state government officials when doing their stories but this just results in hype and misinformation because the officials, while knowledgeable about their own state funds, seem to know nothing about the local funds. It never seems to occur to the media that the best source of information about unclaimed money is the business people who run unclaimed money recovery services so they are rarely interviewed or featured.So, how do people determine on their own if they have money in the other funds? This is a very difficult question to answer. First of all, if you or your company or organization do have substantial funds in a local or federal unclaimed money fund, the odds are fairly high that you will be contacted by a recovery service at some point so be open to the call or letter if it arrives. As explained above, research the company carefully by visiting their website and Googling their name. If the company appears to be legitimate, you can be almost 100% certain they've found your money. It's perfectly acceptable to try to find the money yourself after you've received the free notification but don't expect the company to reveal the source of the money until you become a client. Auditing databases for unclaimed funds and then tracing and contacting the rightful recipients is very time consuming and expensive work so no company should be expected to divulge all their research until they have a signed agreement.If you haven't been contacted by a recovery service, you can search on your own for local unclaimed money. Unfortunately, this search can be very difficult because government workers often deny the very existence of "unclaimed money funds" under their control at the local level and will direct you to the big state fund. Apparently, this dissimulation is acceptable to them because they assign different names to the funds such as Excess Proceeds Funds, Surplus Money Funds, Crime Victim Restitution Funds, etc. or another key designation I won't disclose because it's an important part of my business. The local claim departments are often vastly understaffed so they certainly don't want to be inundated with dozens of claims that would require the expenditure of many extra hours of claim investigation to ensure the money is returned only to the rightful claimants and not to fraudulent imposters, which is another important reason they avoid publicizing their funds. As a result, you must be very persistent, in many cases, to find these local funds.To look for money languishing in federal unclaimed money funds, Google "Lost Pension Money", "HUD/FHA Refunds", "Unredeemed Savings Bonds", "Missing Tax Refunds", "Tribal Trust Funds" and similar terms to find the federal agencies that handle those claims. This also holds true even if you live in Puerto Rico, The U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa or other unincorporated territories of the United States.In closing, I'm often asked to search all my databases to determine if a client has any unclaimed money anywhere. Unfortunately, I must politely decline this request because that's not the way my business works. I always start with the money I find on government databases and then trace the money back to the lawful claimants, not the other way around. Because there are thousands of unclaimed money funds nationwide, the overwhelming majority of which I've never audited, starting with people or companies and then searching for their unclaimed money everywhere would be a Herculean task so I would not agree to do that.Most unclaimed money recovery services would prefer that I do not reveal so much inside information about our business but I am doing so here and on my website as a public service to counter the staggering amount of misinformation circulating about unclaimed money funds and the recovery companies that audit them.