Hello Mississippi

[Janice Goff]

I lived on the MS Gulf Coast all my life. I am living in AZ now. My son is incarcerated here and was recently moved to Great Plains OK facility. I check in on MS post often. I have two cousins in prison there. I also write a couple of inmates here in AZ prisons who are from Pascagoula and Hurly MS.

My mama has been doing our family geneology for as long as I can remember. I often help her with research. One MS research file I check into often is the Unclaimed Money site in on the MS Treasury page. I am amazed at how much money our MS families have in this fund. It's just sitting there waiting for people to claim.

My husband and I were there during Katrina. After we were able to get off the coast and return to AZ I decided to go through this site and write letters to as many people as I could. Some of the money there is a life changing amount. Some are very small amounts. Since 2005 I bet I've sent out over 600 letters including the forms (found on this page). I saw a drastic reduction in the money there after I began my letter campain. Every year names are added. I've found quite a few of my husbands family there who have now claimed their money.

This money comes from many places. One typical place are savings accounts that are just sitting there with no activity for over 3 months. The bank puts this inactive amount in unclaimed funds after 9 months of inactivity. Funny how I thought a savings account was just that and could sit for how ever long I wanted it to. I had an old savings acct here in AZ that I forgot about and actually had to go through the process here.

The site is easy to search. If it's your money you will have the necessary info to claim it along with the necessary notorized form. Check every last name you can think of. Our families in MS need their money.

I have also found inmates who have money there. I do not know how they got the form notorized but I do know that I have seen that their money was collected. I have done state searches by reqest of inmates I write to and have found many of their family members in other states unclaimed money site and sent their family the info to claim their funds. Every state has one of these sites. Search by last name in any state you or a loved one has lived.

My son recieved notification last year that his stimulus check was turned in to the child care division of AZ for child payment. So this actually helped him with that. His AZ State TX check which was over 300 was actually sent here to him. I fwd it to him in prison. It took longer to process than the under 100 dollar amt money orders I send him (which is the max single deposit without a processing wait) but it too was eventually posted to his books. I do not know much about how MS works at the prison accounting level. I do know that there are 1000's of our family members who have money in the unclaimed treasury site.

I hope some of you get your cash back.

http://www.treasury.state.ms.us/unclaimed/index.htm

Hugs to all,