Unclaimed Property Question

Hi fellow FWers,
A friend of mine got a letter from a company telling him they can get him some money from unclaimed property and they want 10% in return. I did some Google search and found out this is legit stuff. While he sorts this stuff out, I decided to see if there is anything in my/wife's name and there was a hit. My wife has some $1600 in unclaimed property while she was attending school in TX.

I went to texas.gov which redirected me to http://www.window.state.tx.us/up/ and this money shows up here. When I started to fill the form out, they were asking for SSN and I thought I should tread carefully. I wanted to know if anyone has any experience in such claims. Not through a "finder" but someone who claimed and got the amount on their own. Please share.

I found another thread on FW but this thread does not explain the process, so decided to open a new thread.

State government ran sites are legit. I've done such a claim in my state and its not hard. I just had to print a form, get it notarized and mail it in. I woulnd't pay a 3rd party service anything to do this kind of thing.

I did it also. simple process.

Received money personally or for clients from Connecticut, Florida and California.

Thanks all of you for the response. My wife filed for it and I also informed my friend to do the same.

I've done the process in Texas before, using the government site (that you listed). It's safe. I expect in many cases, they use SSNs and such to match up with information they have but don't publish, to verify you're the same 'iamtheone' that the property belongs to, and not someone else with the same name.

humanity829 said:   Let's try that again. Evidently I was to lengthy in the reply. Unclaimed Property is very real. I am just today filing for another claim I did not know I had. I used lostmoney.com it is a free consumer site that searches all the sources for you. missingmoney.com is a state sponsored site, however they did not have all the states covered. foundmoney is a site you have to pay for and they had limited and outdated info when I searched this week. I do this to help people, so have some history. Happy to help.

Not that I trust BBB, but:

F on BBB

Plus they have an alert on lostmoney . com:

"Mail sent to the business on 01/16/2012 was returned by the U.S. Postal Service as Undeliverable as Addressed."

atikovi said:   iamtheone said:   My wife has some $1600 in unclaimed property while she was attending school in TX.

I can understand $50 or $100, but how the hell does someone forget about $1600?

Sometimes people don't even know they have the money coming to them. I got a surprise >$500 check from my health insurance the other day. I guess i had a couple bills cross and overpaid or double paid or something.

I have another question related - I found a claim for unclaimed property in AL from when I was in college about 13 years ago. It was for a utility bill deposit when I lived with my boyfriend at the time. I have no records now that indicate I lived at that address (I only live there 6 months, but apparently payed for phone service? whatever.). Anyway, AL wants proof that I lived at that address and I have NOTHING that states I lived there. Ideas?

If your money was taken by mistake do something about it, don't just roll over and take it.

No one or system is ever going to be perfect.

Contact the Controller's executive office and file a complaint.

They are public servants and will/should try to help you.