By Corinne Murdock |
Military personnel stationed in Arizona anytime over the past 30 years may have thousands in unclaimed property.
The Arizona Department of Revenue (ADOR) is seeking 24,009 military members who have a combined $7 million in unclaimed property or funds in Arizona. The largest amount of unclaimed property is worth over $217,000.
Relevant personnel were stationed at Camp Navajo Army Base, Fort Huachuca Army Base, Luke Air Force Base, Tucson’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Yuma Proving Ground Army Base, and the Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) in Yuma.
Those who believe they have unclaimed property should visit MissingMoney.com, then enter their name as well as their state and city of residence. Individuals listed as having unclaimed property may then submit a claim form, linked here.
In the last fiscal year, the ADOR Unclaimed Property program returned $47 million to owners. Over the last three years, they returned about $155 million. Presently, ADOR reports having over $2 billion in unclaimed property.
Some unclaimed property over the years has all the makings of a blockbuster movie. According to Block Club Chicago, a Chicago man left behind $11 million in unclaimed property in 2016. That’s a record high for unclaimed property. The man, Joseph Stancak, died at 87 a multimillionaire without a will and no immediate living relatives. It wasn’t until this year that a company specializing in unclaimed money awarded the property to 119 distant relatives, none of whom knew Stancak.
An average of one in seven people have unclaimed property averaging $2,000, according to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators.
Unclaimed property doesn’t remain in safekeeping forever, depending on what type of property is held. In January, ADOR hosted an auction for $1.8 billion in property from unclaimed safe deposit boxes.
ADOR holds onto that type of property for around three years before auctioning it off. The profits from those items are retained by ADOR in a bank account for another 35 years. That collection of property had one owner who potentially owned $1.5 million, according to 12 News.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
