Transcription
[music] [music] [music] Welcome everyone. Jeff Carrer here, communications director for the Louisiana Department of Treasury. This is our episode number two podcast. Very pleased to introduce our state treasurer, the honorable Dr. John Fleming. Dr. Fleming, how are you?
>> Doing great, thank you.
>> On this episode, we're going to talk about what goes on in probably Dr. Fleming's favorite division of, uh, of the Department of Treasury, and that is unclaimed property.
>> Yes.
>> Tell us about that.
>> Well, unclaimed property is really, uh, we are holding other people's money. And [snorts] how does it come to us? It could be an account that was forgotten about, maybe a deposit for a rental. It could be a tax refund. It could be an inheritance. And they, the institution may not be able to find the legal owner. So, they provide it to us. And it's our responsibility to find the people who this money is owed to, and we provide it to them. And really, we churn hundreds of millions of dollars a year of money that comes to us, getting it back to the rightful owners.
>> Some stats that I think everyone should know. We have over a billion dollars in this, uh, fund to give away, and one in six people in Louisiana have unclaimed property. It's amazing.
>> Yes, it really is. And sometimes it could be as little as $50. Sometimes it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars. And, uh, one of the things that we do, Jeff, is what's called a data match where we reach out to the Department of Revenue that has the name IDs of Louisianans. And if we can match those up, we'll send them the money, uh, even without notification.
>> But in some cases, we just don't have everybody's ID, and, and we may be holding money. So we do recommend that Louisianans do this periodically, once or twice a year. Go to our website lcashclaim.org, laccashclaim.org, or just come to our treasury website where you can find a button for this. You put a little bit of your personal information in this, and if there's money owed to you, you can claim it right there, and people usually get it in about three days.
>> And, and the process is simple. Uh, we got a staff that does a great job getting the money out because we don't want to be holding it. We want to get it back to the people.
>> Right.
>> Absolutely. And the legislature and the governor cannot touch it. So if you don't claim your money, then someday your heirs will get it, but not the government. The government, this is totally firewalled from the state government or federal government.
>> And another thing, uh, this is not just individuals, but, uh, small businesses and also nonprofits. We were at Southern University recently giving a check.
>> Yes, we did. We gave, uh, several thousand check to Southern University, and we may have a much bigger check that we're going to give to them pretty soon.
>> Right. So it could be any entity. It could be your business. It could be a family member. It could be a deceased relative. Uh, it could be, uh, even another governmental entity, as you see with the Southern University. So, uh, any, any entity out there who may have lost track of money, and that's easy to do, could, could indeed have money waiting for them. And there is a verification process because we want to make sure it goes to the right people, and that's what our staff does, goes through and makes sure the, the correct person is getting, getting the money for it.
>> That is correct. And also, I mentioned, you heard me say about the data match. We send those checks out spontaneously. So, for instance, one of the most recent ones we did, we sent out 143,000 checks amounting to $34 million. So, one of our checks could just one day end up in your mailbox. And believe it or not, some people thinking that it's some kind of promotion or scam, throw the check away. So we ask people, look, if it's coming from the Department of Treasury in Louisiana, has my name on it, uh, at least attempt to deposit it. For heaven's sakes, don't throw that check away.
>> And we have to tell the story about the one person that you gave the big check to who was actually, um, homeless, right? That our office gave to. We actually had a, a gentleman that we could not find that we owed him over $200,000. And the reason why we couldn't find him is he was homeless, but we did track him down and we did give him his money. And so we feel so good about, uh, the fact that people are being reconnected with their assets. Very important job that we have here at the Treasury.
>> Well, uh, thank you for all that, Dr. Fleming. Appreciate it very much. And folks, go to lacclaim.org or and, uh, get your money there.
>> Yeah, absolutely.
>> All right, thank you all very much.
>> Thank you.
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