Your state may owe you money. There's a better way to find out. | Opinion

This opinion column has been udpated.

It sounds like a scammer's email, but it's true: State governments across the country are holding about $100 billion ‒ some of which may belong to you or people you know.

This unclaimed money ‒ or "unclaimed property" in government-speak ‒ isn't in the forms of benefits, grants or taxpayer assistance. It is people's own money from forgotten bank accounts, unreturned security deposits, unused gift cards and other assets that people often just leave behind.

States did not earn this money. They are supposed to just safeguard it and return it.

Over time, though, states have become more than custodians. Until the rightful owners come forward to make claims, state governments often use interest drawn on the money to cover a variety of expenses.

States aren't trying hard enough to return unclaimed money

States can truthfully say they try to return unclaimed money. They can put grateful citizens on TV holding oversized checks. Those stories obscure a larger truth, however. Most of the money remains unreturned.

The sums are large. For example, New York is sitting on roughly $20 billion. California has about $15 billion. Texas has about $10 billion.

A few years ago, I found $250 waiting for me on Virginia's unclaimed property website. Then I started checking for friends and family. My wife had money. Other relatives had money. Friends had money.

Then I found a listing for my cousin Jonathan in Colorado. The amount was only advertised as "over $250."

It was over $250 all right: It was nearly $30,000 from an old tax refund.

It taught me something important: Finding money for yourself feels great. Finding money for others feels even better. Trust me. When you tell a cousin he has $30,000 waiting for him, you earn a lifetime supply of family brownie points.

That is the viral opportunity hiding inside this problem. Search for yourself. Then search for your spouse, siblings, friends, church or former employer. And when you find money, talk about it. Post it on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Bring it up at Thanksgiving.

Not to brag. To inspire someone else to look.

Spreading the wealth, for you and your friends

Once you start looking, you realize my cousin's story is not unusual. In New Jersey, Philip Britton found $40,000 for the Diocese of Camden. In North Carolina, Pam Hathaway found $2,345 waiting for her in Kentucky.

These are not lottery windfall stories. They are system failure stories. Getting it back usually requires the owner to know where to search, provide proof of identity and navigate a hellish landscape of bureaucracy.

That is backwards.

If government can take custody of the money automatically, it should make a serious effort to return it automatically.

Design failures can be fixed. That is why I started UnclaimedMoneyGuy.com. The first step was building a consumer guide to help people understand unclaimed money, search for it, claim it and make sense of a confusing system. The website is only a first step.

Unclaimed property isn't an unsolvable problem

Fixing this problem requires better data, better matching, better consumer education, better media attention, better state transparency, better federal standards and better private-sector tools.

And yes, it needs AI ‒ a system that checks state databases, compares names against addresses, flags likely matches and keeps checking as new records appear.

Built the right way, a platform like this could be a billion dollar company.

Legislation matters, too. In April, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, began pressing for answers about state unclaimed property practices. There's reform legislation being proposed in Congress.

It's a good start, but the larger mission cannot wait on Washington or AI. It starts with people searching for themselves, then searching for the people they care about.

If banks were holding $100 billion that belonged to customers while making the recovery process this confusing, regulators would be kicking down their doors. Yet because this money is scattered across 50 state systems, this has never become the national issue it deserves to be.

Because every story makes the next search more likely.

The money belongs to the American people. It should go back to the American people.

And the only truly crazy plan is pretending the current system is good enough.

Mark Lewyn, a former staff writer for BusinessWeek and USA TODAY's Money section, is the founder of unclaimedmoneyguy.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Your state may owe you money. There's a better way to find out. | Opinion

Reporting by Mark Lewyn, Opinion contributor / USA TODAY

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This story was originally published May 29, 2026 at 12:00 PM.