Free Republic

BOSTON, - The Massachusetts treasurer said the commonwealth owes President Barack Obama more than $300 in unclaimed property. State Treasurer Steve Grossman said his office's cache of unclaimed property has two $156.23 checks for Obama, both refund checks from Comcast, The Boston Globe reported Wednesday. The checks are dated May and June of 2009, but Grossman said it usually takes about three years for the state to receive checks for unclaimed property. Grossman said he doesn't know why Massachusetts was sent the refund checks for a Maryland cable television account. "Because it's a Maryland address, we assume it goes back...

The state's habitual seizure of supposedly unclaimed property in bank and stock brokerage accounts, safety deposit boxes and other repositories of wealth has always been more than a little questionable. The theory of "escheat," as it's called, is faintly medieval, assuming that idle property can be taken by a king for his personal use by divine right, a distant cousin of the doctrine of "eminent domain" under which property may be taken for public use. California, however, refined it into a lucrative source of income, even making it easier to seize property when the state's budget was, as it often...

Millions of Californians have made hefty contributions of cash, stocks, even antique jewelry, to state coffers without knowing it. That's because lawmakers have been raiding the state's unclaimed-property cache and using the proceeds to help balance the budget. About $896 million in unclaimed property was turned over to the state for safekeeping last year under a 46-year-old program designed to protect forgotten or abandoned assets. Less than $239 million of that was eventually claimed; most of the rest was dumped into the state's general fund. State officials have been increasingly aggressive about taking control of the property. When the program...

SACRAMENTO – A little-known legal process with a name only a lawyer could love has become a booming business for the state of California, yielding annual revenue that doubled in one year to more than $800 million in each of the last two fiscal years. When the owners of stocks and bonds have had no contact for three years with the banks and corporations holding their valuables, the property is regarded as unclaimed and "escheats" to the state. Search for missing money The state controller's Web site, www.sco.ca.gov, prominently displays a search function that allows residents to enter their names...

States make 'unclaimed' asset grab Idle accounts target of cash-hungry treasuries By Brendan January, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 6:55 PM ET Nov. 9, 2003 NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Have you ever had that sudden feeling that you've lost touch with someone for a long time? If that someone is a mutual fund or a bank, it's best to reestablish contact. In the past two years, states have been aggressively pursuing "unclaimed property" -- savings accounts, stocks, insurance policies, safety deposit boxes, retirement accounts -- that can be seized if an account is unused for several years or the owner cannot be...