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Show Utah, Other States Battle For Unclaimed Billions ' The states and federal government govern-ment are wrangling over five billion dollars, unclaimed by its owners, but illegally held by Uncle Sam, according to an article ar-ticle in the August Readers Digest. Di-gest. Thousands of people may reap a cash windfall if the states win. also have moved to get back from the federal government the wealth it seized within their borders. bor-ders. So far they have had little luck. California's Attorney General Stanley Mosk protested. "This unclaimed money belongs to the states legally. When we get it, we will hold it for the true owners, own-ers, and by publishing the names in leading newspapers, as modern mod-ern escheat laws require, we will give the owners or their heirs a chance to claim it. With the federal government holding the money, the real owners don't even know where it is." About ten per cent of the forgotten for-gotten money is reclaimed by someone after publication, Bloom writes. The rest goes to good use. Of the 75 millions already taken by the states, New York puts its money into highways, hospitals and schools; Michigan, No. Carolina Caro-lina and Oregon into the school funds exclusively, and in New Jersey, Kentucky and Washington, Washing-ton, it went into general funds. The money has been piling up in forgotten bank accounts, un-cashed un-cashed wage and dividend checks and insurance payments, money orders, income tax refunds, Social So-cial Security payments and the like. The federal government is holding whatever it can grab, Murray Teigh Bloom reports, despite de-spite the fact that U. S. law reserves re-serves the taking of unclaimed property to the states. Bloom's article, "Five Billion Dollar Treasure Hunt" notes that North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Michigan, New York, Tennessee, Washington, Oregon, New Jersey, Alaska Arizona and Utah have recently passed new laws dealing with their right of "escheat" the taking of unclaimed un-claimed property. Several states I |