It’s rare that the government pays YOU.  But in the case of iCash, it is totally true.

If you’ve never heard of it, the Illinois State Treasurer has an Unclaimed Property division.  Somehow money gets lost.  Consider this the lost and found for cash until someone comes around to claim it.  What kinds of things are considered unclaimed property?

“Common types of unclaimed property include: checking and savings accounts, uncashed wage and payroll checks, uncashed stock dividends and stock certificates, insurance payments, utility deposits, customer deposits, accounts payable, credit balances, refund checks, money orders, traveler’s checks, mineral proceeds, court deposits, uncashed death benefit checks and life insurance proceeds. Unclaimed property does not include real estate or vehicles.”

In my case, I had two unclaimed properties.  One was an iPass from one of my old cars that I thought I had closed out — nope.  The second?  A double payment to a credit card that I had closed out years ago.  In total, it was like… $300.

All I had to do was fill out an online form, which included some personal identifiers to make sure someone wasn’t scamming them..  And I’m not kidding, in less than fifteen minutes, iCash confirmed they would send me a check in the mail.  No paper forms to fill out or mail.  It was that easy.

Apparently, in the past the system was — not so slick.  But modernization of the program has taken away most of the headaches.

So, you should go look to see if you or someone you know has free money out there.  I’m glad I did.  Now I have beer money.  — [eric]