Illinois Is Sending 73,000 People Unclaimed Money–Are You One?

I have no idea how much cash and property you have lying around at your disposal, but the Illinois State Treasurer, Michael Frerichs, has around $5 billion in unclaimed funds for Illinois residents sitting in the Unclaimed Funds page, despite having returned over $1 billion in assets to their rightful owners since 2015.

Under the old rules, in order to possibly receive unclaimed funds or property from the state of Illinois, you had to fill out a detailed claim form at this website. But now, the state can go ahead and send you the unclaimed funds that belong to you without a claim form being filed.

And that's exactly what Treasurer Frerichs and his office are doing, according to a news release on Monday of this week.

The Illinois Treasurer's Office Says That Over 70,000 Illinois People Will Be On The Receiving End Of Unclaimed Funds Checks, And That The Amount Could Be As Much As $5,000

Before you start to ramp up the excitement, it might be a good idea to see how the Illinois State Treasurer's Office defines "unclaimed funds and/or property."

Unclaimed Property is unclaimed or abandoned intangible property. It represents a certain obligation a company is holding for another person or business. It includes checking and saving accounts, certificates of deposit, over payments, insurance checks, payroll checks, utility refunds, money orders, un-cashed checks, dividends, stocks, bonds, contents of safe deposit boxes and more.

If you're curious about how much money will be mailed out, the Treasurer's Office says there's around $47 million:

The Enhanced Money Match Program leverages data already collected by the state and crossmatches it with the treasurer’s unclaimed property database. When a matching name and mailing address is identified and confirmed, the unclaimed property owner will receive a letter from the Treasurer’s Office that describes the amount and source of the money. After one additional security step is concluded, a check simply is issued to the owner. All they have to do is watch for the mail.