Casting the Net for Unclaimed Funds

Floating out there in the financial ether are tens of billions of dollars in unclaimed goods--some of which might just be yours.

The billions are made up of inactive bank accounts, lost utility refunds, abandoned pension benefits, unclaimed safe-deposit box contents and a variety of other forgotten assets that in many states are required to be turned over to the government for eternal safekeeping.

Most of these treasures would probably never be claimed since the reason they were lost in the first place was that people had forgotten about them. Why would they even suspect that they had a hidden treasure out there?

But in the last few years, a variety of government agencies have begun to put up computerized lists of unclaimed goods on the Internet.

Searching for that lost bank account or forgotten refund is now as easy as doing an AltaVista search for chocolate chip cookie recipes. The results are instantaneous and fascinating.

I found nothing for myself, but I plugged in a few common names into the state of California’s unclaimed property page (https://www.sco.ca.gov/col/ucp/) just to see what would turn up.

John Mitchell of Burlingame has $79.77 waiting for him from a dormant Eureka Federal Savings & Loan account. Janet Jones of Fresno has $38.17 owed to her by Pacific Gas & Electric. William Wong of Salinas has $135.07 coming to him from Standard Fire Insurance Co.

If any of you are reading this, you don’t have to rush. The funds will be there forever by law, just waiting for you to claim them.

California state Controller Kathleen Connell said the state now returns about $150 million every year in unclaimed property. Her office estimates that figure will grow over the next year by nearly 150%, largely due to the Web site, which was created in August.

About 30 states now have Internet search sites for unclaimed property, according to the National Assn. of Unclaimed Property Administrators, or NAUPA.

In addition, there are search sites for Holocaust claims (https://www.claims.state.ny.us/index.htm), unclaimed pension benefits (https://search.pbgc.gov/), Department of Housing and Urban Development and Federal Housing Administration insured mortgage refunds (https://www.hud.gov/3rdparty.html) and unclaimed credit union funds (https://www.ncua.gov/all_docs/news/unclaimed/unclaimed.html).

The Swiss Bankers Assn. has a Web site under construction for long-dormant Swiss bank accounts (https://www.dormantaccounts.ch).

There are numerous companies that will trace lost assets for a fee. But Connell said the boom in Web sites means that people can dispense with the fee and do the search themselves in just a few minutes.

Besides, she added, “it’s great fun.” Searching for lost goods could become “the new parlor game in offices,” she said.

NAUPA has a convenient hyper-linked list of all the state Web sites for unclaimed property at https://www.unclaimed.org.

Valerie Jundt, NAUPA’s executive director, said the organization is planning to construct a national search site this summer that will automatically check through the unclaimed property databases for all participating states.

Jundt said that consumers need only check states in which they have lived, since unclaimed property is listed according to the last known address.

Ashley Dunn can be reached via e-mail at ashley.dunn@latimes.com.