TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Each year, Florida's Bureau of Unclaimed Property receives thousands of items from neglected safe deposit boxes in banks around the state and it holds millions of dollars in unclaimed financial assets. The state works all year trying to track down the rightful owners so you can claim what's yours.
News4Jax recently traveled to Tallahassee to
get a peak inside the vault that holds the unclaimed valuables.
"Right now we have more than 150,000 items in the vault," said Walter Graham with the Bureau of Unclaimed Property.
Those items were either forgotten about and left in safe deposit boxes or the owners simply quit paying the fees at the bank.
"We hold everything we have in here for at least two years," added Graham.
Over those two years, the Bureau tries to find the owners, but if they can't
be found, anything with commercial value eventually goes to auction.
"When we sell them, we credit the cash to the account and the owner of the safe deposit box or their heirs can claim that cash indefinitely, forever," he explained.
Liz Tatum escorted us News4Jax inside the vault.
"We open up a box and it's a surprise every time," she said.
Tatum says she gets a charge
out of the job - helping reunite people with their lost valuables.
"They're all just waiting here. They're sitting here, waiting. They're waiting to go home," she explained. "This is kinda our lost and found and hopefully we can reunite these items with their owners."
Boxes of items turned in from safe deposit boxes that come into the bureau are opened, documented and appraised. This year, items from some 4,000 safe deposit boxes!
Tatum's found everything from $20,000 in cash stuffed in one to a simple cork. Regardless, everything gets the same care.
"I love some of our historical items, and in the past year, we have gotten a
newspaper from the 1860s with information about the Civil War. And we had a newspaper after the Lincoln assassination," she said.
Tatum recalls one item she wasn't expecting.
"We've received a wedding dress that somebody had wanted to, you know, preserve and keep in their safe deposit box," she said.
Other items are more expensive.
"We've had
some jewelry that's been worth a couple million dollars, and that was returned back to its owner," said Tatum. "We were very glad to see that go home."
Aside from the valuables in the vault, 99-percent of what Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater is holding for Floridians is cash and financial assets from old bank accounts. That includes home mortgage escrows, stocks, bonds, utility deposits and anything you may have long forgotten.
"If it wasn't for the Unclaimed Property Program, all of these assets would still be
held in some company somewhere, said Graham. "I call it in the darkness. We bring it out of the darkness and into the light so people can find out about i
t."
But, for some reason or another, all too many do not claim their assets or items being held.
"A few years ago we had a 6-and-a-half carat flawless diamond ring, one of the most expensive things we've ever had," he said.
The bureau sent the owner several claim forms, but no response. Graham says the state is so persistent, they've actually gone knocking on doors to help people recover their assets. It took them two years to get one woman to claim her bundle of money.
"She had $4 million here,cash money, slam dunk claims," he said. "It was her money. She wasn't the heir to it, it was hers."
She did finally get her cash and Graham
says it made him proud.
"We provide a direct immediate benefit to citizens, and that's something to feel good about," Graham said.
A big thank you to the Bureau of Unclaimed Property, which the state Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Atwater oversees, for letting News4Jax inside the vault. If you would like to check and see if something in that vault is yours, or if there's something that belongs to someone you know, it's simple. Just go to https://www.fltreasurehunt.org/. The site explains exactly what to do and you can check as often and as many times as you would like.