Recovering Lost Money
It happens all the time that people have money in an account of some sort that they forget about. If you move and don’t check on the account, it would be easy to never see it again.
What happens on the other end in such situations is the institution holding the money is supposed to make a good faith effort to locate the owner of the funds to return them. Personally, I question how hard they try, as there is no motivation to do so. Assuming they are still unable to reach the owner of the funds, after a certain period of time, usually five years, the money is supposed to be transferred to the state government, according to the last known address of the rightful owner of the funds. This process is called escheatment. All 50 states have a website to search for such lost money or property.
With that background, I recently renewed contact with Peter of the casino table game Match 52. As a public service and good deed, he created a free web site as a starting place to locate lost money at escheatment.com. This is an entirely free site and asks for no personal information. It is mostly a link to the Secretary of State of all 50 states to perform such a search.
In my case, my friend Angela, who you in many of my videos, searched on my name. She told me she found four listings for me, including two over $1,000. I fell all over myself thanking her, but she said it took only a minute of her time and referred me to the Nevada Secretary of State web site.
She was right. I had money with the state of Nevada from four sources. It was a simple process to ask for the money back. As I recall, I had to put in my name, Email, date of birth, Social Security number, and whether I was a business or individual. Since it was a government web site, I felt comfortable giving them my Social Security number. Two of the claims were over $1,000 and the other two were $23.60 and $139.13.
Almost immediately, I got two Emails back. One said my claim for the two big claims, totaling $4780.13 was approved and I could expect a check within three weeks. For the two smaller claims, I was asked for color copies of a government-issued ID, Social Security card and utility bill. So far, I have not bothered to do so. I speculate that funds associated with a Social Security number are easier to verify the owner for. In my case, the smaller claims were for $23.60 with the Red Rock casino (I think because I had an old sports betting account I left money in) and $139.13 with Skrill (which looks like a Paypal kind of service for Internet casinos).
If you’re wondering how I forgot about $4,780, it’s probably because I like to pay bills, including property taxes, in large amounts in advance. In Nevada, you’re given four vouchers early in the year to pay your annual property taxes on a quarterly basis. I usually pay for the full year at once. I have twice sold houses in Las Vegas and suspect the money was a refund for the partial year that I paid property taxes on those houses but didn’t own them.
In closing, I would like to give a big thank you to Angela and Peter of Match 52. As a little plug, please check Peter’s web site Match52.com. If you scroll to the bottom, you’ll see a link to a YouTube video of me playing a Match52 tournament, hosted by Angela and Heather, my LiveStream producer. Don’t forget to check out Eschatment.com to see if you have any lost money out there.