State Treasurer David McRae is celebrating a major milestone in his pursuit to return unclaimed money to Mississippians.
“We have returned $150 million,” McRae said. “The program started in 1984, and we have returned more than half of the money overall.”
For those unfamiliar with the concept, unclaimed money consists of funds or other assets that have been abandoned by their rightful owner for a specified period of time. In Mississippi, if the person entitled to the money does not claim it within five years, a financial institution will turn the sum over to the state treasury, which is tasked with locating the owner.
In its more than 40 years of existence, the state treasury’s unclaimed money department has returned $291 million to rightful owners. However, as McRae noted, more than half of that figure has been given to Mississippians within the past five years.
Since taking office in 2020, one of the top items on McRae’s agenda has been to return unclaimed money to Mississippians, and he has objectively delivered. McRae’s office has made it easier for people to acquire their money by removing the notary requirement for online claims. The state treasury has also returned millions of dollars’ worth of checks to those who had not claimed their money.
But according to McRae, the biggest home run in his pursuit to make people whole financially, regarding funds to which they are entitled, is the community showing up to events his team has put on. The elected official has traveled across the state and hosted “unclaimed money road shows,” where visitors are able to check the treasury’s database to see if they happened to be owed anything.
“We’ve been so proactive in doing it — my team just going out and finding people. We’re about to start another unclaimed money road show,” McRae said. “We’re going to be visiting several different places around the state, and just going out to the people, saying, ‘Hey, look, we’re in your community. Come by.’ And we’ll have like 200 to 300 people show up at these events. We’ll find people anything from $20 to a couple of hundred thousand dollars.”
McRae, noting that his agency is not interested in keeping people’s funds, continues to encourage Mississippians and even nonprofits to claim the money that belongs to them. Folks can click here to see if they are entitled to any unclaimed property.
“At the treasury, we don’t want your money. We want to give it back to the people,” McRae concluded. “It’s an economic boost for the state of Mississippi, and it doesn’t cost the taxpayers a cent.”
