A new “Money Match” program through the Illinois State Treasurer looks to reunite $12M of unclaimed cash and property with Illinois taxpayers.
Treasurer Michael Frerichs tells WGIL that Money Match sees his office and the state Department of Revenue work together to help get taxpayer’s unclaimed money back into their hands and into the local economy. He says a lot of these are smaller dollar amounts that people tend to ignore because they find it isn’t “worth the hassle.”
“Money Match is a program we pushed that allows us to coordinate with the Department of Revenue to figure out if any of the people we hold money for are currently paying taxes in the state,” Frerichs says. “If they pay taxes this year or they still live at that address, we’re just going to mail them a check. We’re going to make it much easier for people to get the money that belongs to them.”
Frerichs says that about $18,000 in unclaimed money will be going out to 122 Knox County citizens. The money comes from different places, including unclaimed life insurance payments, inheritances, unclaimed safety deposit boxes.
“One of the toughest parts of our job is people assume when we’re sending them money that it’s identity thieves. So we’re going to mail them a letter in advance letting them know a check will be coming in the mail telling them they need to cash it – this is legitimate. We also mail that letter to confirm that they still live at that address. If the initial is returned to us as deliverable then we won’t mail a check to that address.”
Frerichs says that a similar program was initiated in Wisconsin and has seen some success in returning unclaimed money to the right hands.
