The TRAP Behind Websites With "INSTANT" Searches for Unclaimed Money

There is no question that the amount of unclaimed money or property being held by both State and Federal agencies is staggering and growing each year current estimate is believed to be in excess of $40 BILLION. And this does not include the amount of abandoned or lost money that has yet to be transferred or escheated to the varies Government agencies.

On the prowl for new sources of revenue, cash-strapped States are pouncing on UNCLAIMED PROPERTY by shortening the dormancy period of most abandoned property and strictly enforcing their statues for holders or companies to transfer over these funds to the States custody. If a state audit discovers the company has been laxed or under reported these funds face stiff fines. As a result in the past few years, millions of unclaimed accounts worth over a $ billion are transferred to the States each year.

With all that said, the emergence of Unclaimed Money web sites have appeared on the Internet hoping to gain from such. Some are legit and do offer a valuable service and information to assist one in locating an unclaimed or lost asset. However, some offer a misleading and costly service especially those that market themselves as FREE and INSTANT searches. Here is how it works:

There is NO National database (we had believed*) for unclaimed accounts. Every State and DC has its own Unclaimed Property Division and each Federal agency handles its own unclaimed accounts. All of the former and many of the latter have online databases for one to search.

These web sites have collected a few millions names with unclaimed accounts from States online databases that can be readily done by laborious copy and pasting records or by purchasing the records from a handful of States that sell its records to Asset Finders and compile or import such records into their own database. With more than maybe over 80 million unclaimed accounts nationwide in both State and Federal databases, processing or obtaining only 8 million records (or 10%), their database will likely have 70%+ of the most frequent American last or surnames.

One is asked to insert your name into their search boxand the Instant result says there is i.e.) $25,000 of unclaimed money in your name. Well, there can be many with your name. However, these sites go ever further. To lure visitors into subscribing, they simply code their query search script (non specific) to include last name / first name records with unclaimed amounts with other records that that have the last name plus the 1st few characters of the first name. So a standard (Last Name First Name) search for Stevens Cathy will generate records such as:

Stevens CAndis ;
Stevens CAmille ;
Stevens CArla ;
Stevens CArol ;
Stevens CArrie ;
Stevens CAssey ;
Stevens CAndice ;
Stevens CArman ;
Stevens CArolyn ;

None of which have no relevance to your search or name.

This is done for one simple reason. Since these sites have less than 10% of the available online records and tweak search script to DISGUISE their lack of # of records in its database.

To verify our hypothesis, we used the name Smith James (both the first and last name are the most common in the US) as our name search query. We printed out the results of the below sites and as expected discovered this:

Having eliminated records such as Smith J ; Smith J D ; Smith John ; Smith Jerry etc, we counted the # of records listed as Smith James

The Unclaimed Database for the State of New York http://www.osc.state.ny.us/ouf/index.htm (one of 50 State and a specific search script) itself had 20% MORE unclaimed records for Smith James alone than did these other supposedly national database sites listed below.

The below sites mask themselves under various URLs, but use the same shallow database.

www.cashunclaimed |
www.cashclaim |
www.Lost-Money.CashClaim.com |
www.USunclaimed.com |
www.Unclaimed-Prop.CashClaim.com |

During our research into these phishlike sites. We came across a site that appears to have accomplished a National database. Using the same search criteria of above, their query results for Smith James generated almost 3x the records of New Yorks database. You may wish to check this site http://www.US-UnclaimedMoney.com It's database appears to have over 40 million records from 65 or so different resourses - both State and Federal.

Thomas Tuke is the CEO of American Refund Services specializing in assisting others locate their unclaimed accounts without paying an exorbitant Finders Fee.

http://www.Unclaimed-Databases.com

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