Are unclaimed funds waiting for you? $800M due to LIers sits in government coffers

More than $800 million of Long Islanders' money is sitting idle in government coffers, waiting to be reunited with its rightful owners. 

That cash was lost by unsuspecting Long Island individuals and businesses who fell victim to a slightly more complex version of dropping change in the sofa cushions.

The 1.4 million (roughly equal to the population of Nassau County) unclaimed Long Island accounts held by New York State alone are worth $848.3 million. The average account value — $586.64 based on November data — is skewed by a few big pots. Three-quarters of the recoveries statewide are $100 or less, 20% are between $100.01 and $5,000 and 5% are over $5,000.01, the comptroller's office said.

Even more is stashed in federal coffers, banks and the vaults of other states where Long Islanders once resided.

Susan Silverman Quigley, whose Garden City firm Squigley Financial LLC offers financial planning, tax, mortgage and insurance services, routinely checks for — and recovers — unclaimed funds of new clients.

"Every time I get a client, I find money at IRS.gov or at the New York State comptroller," she said. "There's a lot of money out there."

Nationwide, states returned more than $4 billion in unclaimed funds to owners in the fiscal year ended June 30, a spokeswoman for the National Association of State Treasurers said in an email. 

The unclaimed funds come from a variety of sources. Refund checks from wireless or cable TV companies may get lost in the mail on their way to customers.  A heating oil company could cut a check to a departing customer who left no forwarding address. A bank could hold an account deemed dormant after years of inactivity. A company might be holding records of an individual's gift card that was never redeemed. A retirement account could be long forgotten.

Another pool of unclaimed funds sits with the Internal Revenue Service. That agency will send refunds to eligible taxpayers — as long as they file within three years. Taxpayers who go beyond the three-year limit are, in effect, donating their refunds to the Treasury, according to the agency. As of March 2022, the IRS estimated that almost $1.5 billion was owed to about 1.5 million taxpayers who did not file their 2018 returns by the April 2022 deadline. New Yorkers alone were owed $79.8 million.  

Anyone can lose track of their money, from this reporter to boldface names like former President Donald Trump, former Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano and singer and Long Island native Ashanti, to the comptroller of New York State, Thomas DiNapoli, who oversees roughly $17.5 billion in statewide unclaimed assets. 

In fact, DiNapoli said that a bank account dating from his high school days almost landed in the state's unclaimed assets account. The bank account was dormant for years, he said, and was linked to an outdated address. Eventually, the bank placed an outreach telephone call to DiNapoli before turning the money over to the state, "which would have been very embarrassing," the state comptroller said.

"We have this account that hasn't been utilized that we're going to turn over to the state comptroller's office," a bank official told DiNapoli in the phone call. "I said, 'No! Don't do that!'"

Gloria Nicodemi, 41, of North Bellmore, said she and her husband began checking the comptroller's website regularly about six years ago.

In one case, a long inactive credit union account yielded about $250, she said.

Nicodemi compared recovering assets to rummaging through the pockets of your cold-weather clothes after the winter.

"It's like... when you put your hand in your pocket and you find that $5 that you stuffed in there," she said.

Lost bank accounts are the No. 1 source of unclaimed funds in New York, accounting for about 41% of assets, followed by general businesses and insurance companies, DiNapoli said.

The state comptroller's office returns about $1.5 million a day to rightful owners, but is constantly receiving new unclaimed assets as the dormancy period for bank, business and insurance accounts expire, typically over three to five years.

Once they reach the state comptroller's office, the accounts theoretically will linger forever or until they are claimed.

"The accounts do not expire," DiNapoli said. "They exist in perpetuity."

And if somehow every account holder or heir magically appeared, the state would have to pay up.

"Technically, if everyone came out of the woodwork and claimed all the assets in our system, we'd be responsible for paying all $17 billion out," DiNapoli said.

The pool of unclaimed funds, however, is managed based on historic ebbs and flows of the assets and on the assumption that a day of mass-redemption reckoning is not on the horizon. In fiscal 2021-2022, for example, the comptroller's office received $980 million in unclaimed assets and paid out $404 million.

At the end of the fiscal year, state law requires the comptroller to sweep into the general fund any amount in excess of $750,000.  In fiscal 2021-2022, that transfer totaled $560 million in unclaimed funds to the state's general fund, which receives all state income not earmarked for a specific activity, program or alternate fund. An additional $16 million in unclaimed funds was authorized to cover operations of the comptroller's Office of Unclaimed Funds.

Through it all, more unclaimed funds keep rolling in.

"I'd love to be able to say we have zero money available, that it's all returned," DiNapoli said. "As much as we return, we're still getting more money in."

That pool of lost funds often begins with dysfunctional family communications, financial and legal advisers say.

Elder law attorney Jennifer Cona said that family deaths often result in lost assets. The founder and managing partner of Melville-based Cona Elder Law PLLC said that in many couples, one person — often the husband in older generations — is tasked with overseeing finances. When that spouse dies, their mate manages. But when the other spouse passes away, heirs may be left with few clues on how to locate assets.

Tax returns typically are a good place to start in tracking down assets, Cona said, but in some cases no return is filed.

Cona and Quigley said that adult children often are loath to ask parents about their assets until it is too late.

"Kids are afraid to talk to their parents for fear of looking greedy," said Quigley, who directs families to an "elephant in the room" web site bit.ly/3XayRvG)  designed to help family members broach the subject and catalogue physical and online assets and accounts.

Complicating the process is that many companies encourage customers to move to electronic statements, Quigley said. Retrieving those statements can require access to the account holder's email. Access to email may require access to passwords. If the account holder has died or is incapacitated, getting those passwords can be difficult.
Still, when the unclaimed asset system works, DiNapoli said, it allows the state to deliver an unexpected windfall to New Yorkers, even if it's the person's money to begin with.

"This is the fun part of the job," he said. "Sometimes people thank me as if I'm giving them a gift."

How I hit the jackpot

After speaking to certified financial planner Susan Silverman Quigley for this story, I was certain that piles of my money were gathering dust in a cold, dark government vault.

I soon swung into digital action. Within minutes, I struck pay dirt on the New York State unclaimed assets web site.

Apparently, a refund check from a heating oil company got lost on its way to my new address about a decade ago. My jackpot was $115.82 for about five minutes of digital digging. Ka-ching!

Slightly more complicated is my effort to recover $45.22 from Northwestern University, where I went to grad school. That claim with the Illinois State Treasurer requires that I mail a notarized form, which I have yet to complete. Documentation — a death certificate, proof of residency at an old address, designation as an executor — may be required in some cases. 

Perhaps my haul falls a wee bit short of finding Montezuma's Treasure; on the other hand, my take with unclaimed assets is better than my lifetime return on lottery tickets.

I am far from the only New Yorker or New York organization that has been leaving money on the table. A few minutes of casual digging on the New York State comptroller's unclaimed funds web site revealed:

Two unclaimed accounts for Newsday, 14 for Hofstra University, 10 for Brookhaven National Laboratory, 40 for Northwell Health, three for the New York Islanders, one for the nonprofit Viscardi Center in Albertson, one for former Rep. Tom Suozzi, one for former Nassau County executive Edward Mangano (now at a federal prison in Massachusetts), one for Sands Point billionaire Ken G. Langone, one for singer Ashanti Douglas, six possible accounts for former president and current Florida resident Donald Trump, and one for deceased center fielder Mickey Mantle addressed to Yankee Stadium.

(Readers who discover a windfall and want to share their story should drop me a note at ken.schachter@newsday.com.)

By Ken Schachter

kenneth.schachter@newsday.comkschach

Ken Schachter covers corporate news, including technology and aerospace, and other business topics for Newsday. He has also worked at The Miami Herald and The Jerusalem Post.