How it works

Every state has an escheat law. When a company owes you money and cannot reach you for a dormancy period — usually three years — it is legally required to stop holding that money and hand it to the state. The state becomes custodian. It holds the money indefinitely, publishes your name in a public database, and waits.

California alone is currently holding over eleven billion dollars this way, across more than three million records. Roughly six hundred thousand of those records are individual people owed at least $2,500 who have never filed a claim.

The reason is almost never that the money is disputed. It is that the notification letter went to an address you left in 2003.

Free, instant, and anonymous. Type a name; we match it against the state file. We show you the exact amount, the company that reported it, the property type, and a partially masked version of the address on the account.

The address is masked on purpose. The house number is hidden so the page cannot be harvested into a clean mailing list by someone else — but the street and city are visible, which is usually enough for you to recognise a place you lived. Later, we ask you for the house number back. Only the real owner knows it.

The state needs three things established, and they are the same three every time:

• That you are who you say you are. A government photo ID.
• That your Social Security number matches the reported one. A card, a W-2, a 1099 — anything official that shows the number.
• That you are connected to the address on the record. This is the one that defeats people. An old utility bill, a bank statement, a tax return, a lease, a DMV record — anything from the right era with your name and that address on it.

If the owner has died, add a certified death certificate and proof of your right to inherit. If it is a business, add proof you are an officer.

This is the part worth 10%, so it is worth being specific about.

• Assemble the state's claim packet correctly the first time.
• Work out which documents will satisfy the address link when the obvious ones no longer exist, and go get them — county recorders, old utilities, DMV, archives.
• Go back to the original holder for the account records the state wants and you never kept.
• Handle the state's follow-up questions, which arrive weeks later and restart the clock if ignored.
• For deceased owners: establish the chain of heirship and coordinate every heir's signature or waiver.
• Chase it. Politely, repeatedly, for as long as it takes.

None of that is magic. It is administrative persistence, and it is exactly the thing that causes most people to abandon a claim halfway.

The state pays you, directly. The money never passes through us and we never ask for your bank details. Once you have been paid, we invoice 10% of the recovered amount.

If the claim fails, there is no invoice. That is the whole risk arrangement.

• Ask for a fee, a deposit or a “release payment” before you have been paid. Anyone who does is running a scam.
• Imply we are the government, or work for it. We are a private company.
• Take your claim in a state where we are not licensed to file it. Five states require a licence we do not hold; the site will refuse before it asks for your documents.
• Send you a marketing text because we bought your phone number. If you get one claiming to be us, it is not us.
• Sell or share your information.