There are more than 500 people in the Minden-Gardnerville area who could get an unexpected boost from the Nevada State Treasurer's Office.
State Treasurer Kate Marshall is running an advertisement in today's Record-Courier that lists residents, or former residents, of Douglas County who have unclaimed property resting with the state.
That could translate into quite a payout in some instances.
"People forget they have money out there," Marshall said. "It could be their own money, or money they've inherited. Something as simple as leaving a job and never picking up the last paycheck " that money is here with us."
The state is required to list names of potential beneficiaries at least once a year in an effort to return lost or stolen property to its rightful owner.
"It would be silly to always run the list just in Las Vegas," Marshall said."We try to run it around the state in some of the larger metro papers, but this will the first time we've done this with The Record-Courier."
Marshall said there are 530 names of people listed within The R-C subscription area.
"People just try to pass this off because they don't think they're names will be on the list," Marshall said. "We had one incident recently where a woman's husband passed away and just before he died he told her he had $500 put away in a safety deposit box. She came in to file a claim and it turned out to be $155,000. She nearly fainted on the spot."
On the whole, Nevada has taken $82 million in unclaimed property in the last year and paid out $21 million of that.
That was a hefty increase over the $45 million collected the year prior with $12.5 million paid out.
"There's no limitation on how long ago you had that money," Marshall said. "It's your money, it's not the state's. My job is to take the money in and give it back out.
"You always have the right to claim your property."
Marshall said she's made a practice out of collecting the names of the attendees at all of her speaking engagements.
"I come back and run every name through our search and I have yet to back without at least one person in the audience who has unclaimed property in Nevada," she said.
It's something that doesn't just effect Nevada.
"You have to think of where else you have lived and check with the state offices there," Marshall said. "This happens a lot with places you have previously lived because things like utility deposits, bank accounts and credit balances sometimes get left behind."
Even if an individual's name isn't on the printed list, a statewide search is available online at www.nevadatreasurer.gov.
"We've updated the search so that it will look at partial names and things like that," Marshall said. "It makes it much easier to find your way around.
Filing a claim is as easy as downloading a claim form from the Web site.
The treasurer's Carson City office can notarize the form for free in person. That, coupled with a valid proof of identification, more or less closes the deal.
Marshall said similar advertisements to the one in today's R-C ran in Las Vegas last week and with 36 hours, her office had received more than 2,000 claims.
"My staff is working really, really hard to address all of these claims," she said. "They put in all the time to get these people their money. That is one of the greatest parts of our jobs, just watching people's faces when you hand over a $500 check they weren't expecting."
ON THE WEB
Nevada State Treasurer's Office
www.nevadatreasurer.gov
n Joey Crandall can be reached at jcrandall@recordcourier.com or at (775) 782-5121, ext. 212.
