Missing Money: Call Monday to find out if the state is holding your unclaimed property
PORTLAND (WGME) — You could be owed hundreds, even thousands of dollars, and not even know it.
The Office of the State Treasurer is holding over $303 million in unclaimed property. These may be old bank accounts, insurance refunds, or uncashed checks. It’s all money that is considered lost or abandoned.
The average claim is $531, and the biggest available is more than $600,000.
The CBS13 I-Team once again teamed up with the Office of the Maine State Treasurer to help Mainers reclaim their cash.
Staff members took calls for 90 minutes on Monday evening, conducting searches to see whether any of that missing money might belong to you.
State Treasurer Henry Beck joined us live in our studio.
“Every year, assets like bank accounts or uncashed checks, if they’re dormant for a certain period of time, by law, it must be reported to our office,” said Beck. “We take those funds, we safeguard it. But in the meantime we want to find the rightful owners.”
It doesn’t matter if it’s been decades, you can always claim the funds. And it’s worth checking every so often, because Beck says they’re always adding new properties.
They’re also trying to be more proactive about finding owners. Recently, the Treasurer’s Office used data from the Governor’s inflation relief and energy relief programs.
“We took that list [and] crossed referenced it with our unclaimed property list and just sent checks,” said Beck. “We sent 55,000 checks in January.”
You can also go to maineunclaimedproperty.gov and look for your name. It’s easy and it’s free.
