Free Money for Me and You; Part II

Free Money for Me and You; Part II

(note: This is the last half of a two-part story. It will make more sense if you read the first part before this one. To do so, simply scroll down below the monkey and below my profile (no wise-guy comments) and click on it.)

Yesterday I told you about a far away King who wants to share his millions with me. Scoff though you may, sometimes these things are real. To prove my point, I was telling about a true story that I experienced personally. It started out the same way the King notified me. A little research revealed that I was entailed to $2,700 and a whole lot more. Now I will continue where I left off.

Colorado had just set up a program called The Great Colorado Payback / a few years earlier designed to hold unclaimed money which people were entitled to. There are literally thousands of people with unclaimed assets and I was one of those people.

With my identification in hand, I was fairly excited to find out what the story was. Naturally, the boys were just as pumped up because if the story was true, they were going to split about $500 just for figuring out where the treasure was hidden.

When we found the office of the State Agency, we first had to dispense with all sorts of paper work to prove that I was indeed the fellow I said I was; that done, the facts were revealed.

Way back in 1972 I worked for King Soopers www.kingsoopers.com (a large local grocery chain) for a little over a year. I was 22 years old at the time. In my orientation process there was a form which asked if I wanted to buy company stock with a part of each pay check. Now I was only making about $6 per hour, so how much money could I have had withheld for stock? It had to be a very modest sum.

Eventually, Patty and I decided to move to San Diego for a short time (little did we know, that area would prove to be a home away from home for the rest of our lives). At the time we had just been married about a year and we did not have kids or a home. We decided if we were ever going to see how the other half lived we better do it at that time, so off we went. We stayed there about 15 months and then returned to Denver where we have lived ever since.

While we were gone, the grocery chain sent a letter to our last known address asking us what we wanted to do with the modest sum of stock I had accumulated while I was working there. But they must have sent the letter sometime after the forwarding process at the Post Office had expired and we never did get the letter. Not knowing what else to do, the grocery chain handed our little account over to Merril/Lynch, the well known stock brokerage firm. And there it sat for 24 years.

After 20 years, Merril/Lynch turned the account over to the state who will sit on the money until it is claimed. After 4 additional years they allow private investigators to see if they can find the parties. That is how the writer of the original letter found me.

In my case 24 years had passed and King Soopers went through several ownership changes. Along the way they were either bought up of joined forces with Fry's Foods, Dillons and Kroger Companies. Sometimes the stock went up in value. Other times it split and more shares were distributed. By the time I discovered my old lost stock the dividends were indeed $2,700 and the stocks value was 10 times that amount. Altogether I picked up a check for $30,000. The amazing part is that I only made about $10,000 a year when I worked in that store and I only set aside a few dollars per pay check. It is dumbfounding that it reached such an impressive amount.

After pocketing $30,000, I couldn’t help but think about the lady who prompted me to investigate in the first place. I considered the facts and concluded that if I had signed the original agreement she would have received 30% of $2,700 or approximately $1,000. I decided if she would be reasonable, I could still give her that amount.

So, I called her and did not tell her what I had found out. I told her I was thinking about looking for the money myself, but I wanted to verify one thing with her. I asked her “If I agree to work through you will you limit your fee to $1,000?” She was so quick to say, "no" that I was fairly certain that she already knew that the account was a lot more than the $2,700 that she mentioned in her first letter. After all, she was a private investigator.

Her refusal to compromise meant she was willing to take her chances in hopes she would get 30% of the entire amount, which would have been about $9,000. Since I found the money myself (or at least Justin did) and it is likely I would have found it someday anyway, I decided that she did not deserve the full amount, if anything. Her greed did her in. Still, I felt like some sort of finder’s fee was in order. I wrote her a check for $100 and sent it to her anyway.

As far as the state program was concerned my claim was the 2nd biggest one they had ever paid out. Interestingly there was a man in Kansas who was said to have more than twice that much due to him but he just didn’t believe anybody that told him about it. I don’t know if he ever did figure it out.

One of the things that makes this story so weird is we lived in Denver all that time, except for the few months we were in San Diego Our names were in the phone book the whole time that Merril/Lynch held our account, but nobody ever tried to find us.

After we put the money in the bank we went back to the website and began looking up all of the people we could think of. We found a handful of people whose names were identified as having some money due to them. We had a ball the next few nights calling all of those people and telling them the news and sharing our story. Several of them later got their own refunds.

Over the years the states got much better at logging the money but as far as I know they still don’t expend much money trying to find the people who have unclaimed assets. A couple of years ago, Patty found nearly two thousand dollars in Iowa in the name of her mom and dad. There was also some money for one of her aunts.

If you want to know if you have a pot of gold waiting for you and if you live in Colorado, just visit this link and check it out. If you live in some other state or have lived there in the past, I am sure a quick Google search will reveal the state run agency in your area. Guess what I recommend you do.

Now, as far as the email from the rich king who is desperately trying to find some nice person to help him spend his millions, I can’t help but wonder who responds to those letters and what is the catch? I am tempted to follow one just to see at what point they want my bank account information and my social security numbers. On the other hand, I am afraid if I respond at all they will sell my name along with those of other responders. They probably refer to those names as the best list of stupid people.

But before we decide to eliminate all such emails, remember this: In 1993, I got an email that looked a lot like it.

Comments welcomed