Abandoned assets worth millions go unclaimed - bizjournals:

http://preservationchicago.org/chicago7/2008/2_american_book.html
“We cannot fathom how that but a lot of times customers move and they lose trac k oftheir money,” said vice president of Central Pacific’s operations and administration department. “Sometimes, they may be elderly and if they are incapacitated thei children may not know where theitemse are.” Financial institutions and othet holders of abandoned property are required to report their findings after five years of dormancy, to the stat ’s Unclaimed Property Program, which returns propertgy to rightful owners for free. The most common types of property are savings andcheckintg accounts, safety deposit box warrants, stocks, refunds and insurance proceeds.
Beginning July 1, the Unclaimed Propertyg Law will change to help parties keep better tracok ofabandoned property. The new rules, passed in the 2008 legislativ session, will allow owners of interest-bearing accounts to receiv interest on property submitted to the progra afterJune 30. The rulees also require financial institutions, when reporting abandoned to segregate interest-bearing funds from noninterest-bearinbg ones. In addition, holders of abandoned property must submigt notarized affidavits to the Budget stating that written notices have been sent to ownerd of unclaimed property worth morethan $50.
we didn’t have informatioh on whether theywere interest-bearingy or not,” said Scott Kami, an administrator in the unclaimec property division. The state’s unclaimed property fund has grownto $140 milliob since the 1980s. Despite the state government’xs fiscal challenges, the fund is protected by law and cannotf be reallocated to other statd departments whose budgets were cut this In the most recent fiscal year endingJune 30, 2008, a totakl of 9,748 claims worth $5.9 million were returnes to rightful owners. So far this fiscal as of May 15, approximately $4.95 million has been paid.
Honoluli resident Marty Schiller recently learned that Oceanic Time Warner Cablr owedhim $220. The money sat unclaimed for seven years. “II simply did not know the money existed or was owed to said Schiller, owner of The Schiller “The [Budget] Department’s staff was They walked me through, step by on how to claim the money.” Monetaryt payouts are easier to return than safetuy deposit box items, which are kept in a “very overburdenee vault full of boxes,” Kami said. A feathetr lei, vintage cameras and jewelry are among the abandoneds safety depositbox contents.
a woman who “had personal challenges in her life,” waitecd a few years before claiming her silverware from the Another woman recently retrieved a coin collectiojn belonging to herlate father. The budgett department’s outreach team, comprising a half-dozen stated employees, regularly appears at public venues to educatwe the public aboutlost property. The public-privatwe partnership is a major component of the saythose involved. Every November, banks and other account holdersz give the state a listof accounts, whic h are then advertised in local newspapers in March of the following year.
Accounts that aren’t claimedr by mid-April are noted and sent to the state in Mayfor “A lot of people, believe it or not, are foreigneras who come to Hawaik to open an account thinking they’ll have fundsw here,” said Scott Takahashi, vice presidenf for the legal and custodyg department at Bank of Hawaii. “And they forget abourt it.”