Can you imagine reaching into the pocket of an old pair of jeans and finding an $11,000 check? Seems unimaginable, right? But that was essentially what happened to one Okolona, Mississippi, resident at my team’s Unclaimed Money Open House a few weeks ago.
To be honest, that wasn’t even the largest amount of unclaimed money we’ve found. A Mississippian once recovered $1.2 million during their search. That is a life-changing amount to find.
While most who search the state’s unclaimed money database won’t find a million dollars, many will find hundreds and even thousands of dollars in their name. In fact, the average claim in Mississippi is around $2,000—enough to fund your summer vacation!
So, all this begs the question: What is unclaimed money, and how do you find it?
Unclaimed money comes about when a person loses track of money that belongs to them. It might be an inheritance from a long-lost relative, a stock you forgot you had or a refund check from the electric company that went to the wrong address.
Once the money is deemed inactive or lost by a financial institution, it is turned over to the State Treasury to reunite the funds with their rightful owner. Unclaimed money is not Mississippi’s money; it’s your missing money. We simply need to find you and give it back.
My team has made it a priority to return this money at a record-breaking pace. All told, we’ve returned more than $250 million to Mississippians, more than any Treasurer in state history.
As part of this, our team has embarked on a new system of proactive returns, running our databases through various contact systems to find you and give the funds back without any action required on your part. This system was put to particularly good use when we matched funds back to disaster areas to get money in people’s hands within a week of this spring’s devastating tornadoes.
‘America First’ Agenda
For the first time in the country, a state’s unclaimed money program is putting the America First agenda into action—not as a talking point, but as a matter of policy. More specifically, this month, I announced the State Treasury would be requiring all unclaimed money recipients to declare their citizenship before beginning the claims process.
For four years, the Biden-Harris administration opened our borders, allowing millions of illegal immigrants to flood across our borders and take up residency in states across the country, including here in Mississippi. In fact, the Auditor’s Office reports that about 22,000 illegal residents are in the Magnolia State today.
As a result, I felt it was necessary to make sure Mississippians and American citizens were served first by the State Treasury.
There are a few reasons for this. First, it is a matter of principle. It is Mississippi taxpayers that I work for and Mississippi taxpayers who pay the salaries of each member of my team. As such, it is our duty to serve them first and foremost.
Second, it is a matter of practicality. To validate claimant identities, the Treasury uses Social Security numbers, addresses, drivers’ licenses and other forms of identification often tied to American citizenship and verified by cross-referencing domestic databases.
Should an illegal (or any foreign national) resident make a claim on cash, my team must undertake a rigorous verification process that takes significantly more time and resources than a claim made by a citizen. Given that we have a small (albeit mighty) team, it’s important that we prioritize claims in the most efficient manner possible. Asking one’s citizenship helps us accomplish that.
Good policies, like this, have helped me and my team deliver real results time and again. In total, we have returned more than $250 million in unclaimed money—a record-breaking amount. That’s a massive infusion of capital back into our state’s economy without costing taxpayers a penny.
In addition to that, we have earned the state $1 billion in interest income (again, a record-breaking amount) and turned the College Savings program’s finances right side up, taking it from being 72 percent funded when I first came to office to solvency today.
Much of this has been accomplished by delivering a number of state “firsts.” We were the first in Mississippi’s history to enable online claims. The first to conduct a proactive “money match.” The first to deliver unclaimed money checks to disaster areas—without those affected having to take action on their own. These firsts were all done with one thing in mind: Putting Mississippi First. Forever and always, that will be my mission. That will be my commitment to you.
Returning unclaimed money puts funds back in the pockets of those who rightfully earned them, but it also gets money back into circulation here in Mississippi—and that’s good for all of us. Whether you have $11,000 of missing money or $110, it’s worth the search. Visit treasury.ms.gov/search to begin today.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
Editor’s Note: The author uses the term “illegal immigrant.” In our reporting, we use the term “undocumented immigrant” or describe people as living in the country illegally, but do not use “illegal” to describe people. However, in this opinion piece, authored by a state official, we have left the author’s original language intact to best convey his views to the public.