Purse Ho
We’re all struggling to make ends meet these days. So wouldn’t a little windfall be nice?
The Massachusetts Treasury returned more than $174 million to the people last year and they have billions more waiting to be claimed.
Reginald Steele is the lead investigator for the Unclaimed Property Division of the Massachusetts State Treasurer’s Office. His job is to stalk people to give them money.
“In my past experiences in other positions, my investigations have ended in someone being arrested or losing their job,” Steele said. “Here, at the end of the investigation, I give someone a check.”
And he has a lot of work to do because Massachusetts has $3.4 billion in unclaimed property, like forgotten bank accounts, unpaid wages, dividends and uncashed checks.
“The big money is life insurance policies, stocks, maturing CDs, checking accounts,” said Christina Lambert, director of publishing and outreach at the Unclaimed Property Division of the Treasure. “Anyone can have unclaimed money. The older you are, the more likely you are to have unclaimed property.”
To check, just go to Findmassmoney.com, type your name and search. Collecting the money is an easy process if it’s in your name.
“There is an expedited process if you enter your Social Security number,” Lambert said. “If it matches, it’ll automatically approve you and you’ll receive your check in about 15 business days.”
But it takes longer if you are making a claim on someone else’s behalf.
“There will be additional documents required if you are not claiming for yourself,” she said. “So if you’re asking for an estate, a deceased relative, a trust, we need appointments from probate court death certificates.”
Sharon’s Mary Ellen Mazzola recently found some money at the University of Denver, where she attended school 30 years ago.
“Apparently when I was in college I kind of overpaid $200 and they kept it that long,” Mazzola said. “It was a nice little surprise, it’s just funny that it’s been so long.”
Last fall, Steele’s team moved into the Big E in West Springfield and returned more than half a million dollars to visitors who checked their names against the state database.
“I find satisfaction in digging into something that’s been in our system for 10, 20, 30 years and trying to find that person,” Steele said. “You know, we had an account for the president of a public university who had been in our system for over 30 years. And he was able to track her down and give her that money back.”
Steele recently returned $50,000 to a woman and her son in England.
“Her husband was dead in the 1988 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland,” he said. “His friends set up this money for his son. They lost track of it, forgot about it. But now, you know, we’ve been able to get this money together with these people.”
And he returned a large sum to an old man whose wife was sick.
“She was in a hospice. He wanted to take her home,” Steele said. “And we were able to give him this check for $16,000. I got a nice letter from him a little later, he said, ‘I was able to bring my wife home,’ so when you hear a story like that, it really makes you, you know, make you realize how important the work that you’re doing is.”
And on the other hand, believe it or not, some people are in no rush to claim their money.
“Sometimes people just aren’t able to complete the process right now,” Steele said. “Maybe they’re mourning the loss of someone and they don’t want to deal with that person’s estate.”
“I dealt with a very well-known professor in his field who gave us hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he doesn’t really seem to care about the money. He’s focused on his field and that’s it,” he said. “There’s still quite a bit of money in our system for him.”
This money stays with the state until someone claims it. And they advise you to check your name on Findmassmoney.com twice a year, because they always get more goods.