Unclaimed Money owed to 1 in 12 people in South Dakota

PR Log (Press Release) – Jan 17, 2008 – Santa Ana, CA -Nearly $2.2 Million in unclaimed money was returned by South Dakota’s unclaimed money department, in 2007 reported the SD treasury.

South Dakota Treasury Department paid out 5,090 unclaimed money claims in 2007 stated Treasurer. The average claim was over $400 and the unclaimed cash paid out totaled $2,235,949.

South Dakota’s State Treasure’s office takes pride in the amount of unclaimed money returned each year.

However they neglect to acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of dollars private companies, such as Cashunclaimed.com, have spent reaching out to the public, including the residents of South Dakota.

Many state treasury offices do very little to reach out to the public and inform them of unclaimed money. Some states only published a generic ad in a small paper to advertise unclaimed money to the public.

State governments use unclaimed money they receive to lighten the load on their strapped budgets. No wonder they were not eager to return BILLIONS of dollars to the people.

The largest claim paid from South Dakota’s State Treasure’s office was $300,000!
There is still an unclaimed money account of $372,702.75 that remains unclaimed.

The public should be informed of the unclaimed money, not only in South Dakota, but nationwide. The national total of unclaimed money now totals nearly $35 BILLION.

Recognizing the need for a greater outreach to the public and the additional need to give people an easy way to find their unclaimed money, private companies built databases that combined unclaimed money from all 50 states and federal databases then spent huge sums of money advertising "Unclaimed Money" to the public.

Coincidentally, since the creation of these private higher quality sites that spend money to make the public aware of unclaimed money the total of returned unclaimed cash has grown BILLIONS!

The public is strongly encouraged to search a quality unclaimed money database and not a single state search, as they are likely to miss unclaimed money owed to them.

Unclaimed money, commonly known as unclaimed property, includes forgotten checking and savings accounts, uncashed payroll checks and tax refund checks, utility deposit refunds, stocks, bonds and dividends, and even safety deposit box contents.

For most states the statute requires that after one to five years of inactivity businesses across the country are required to turn all unclaimed money and unclaimed property to the state treasurer’s office for safekeeping.

All people are strongly urged to search and see if they are owed unclaimed money.