States confiscating personal unclaimed funds

  A pretty stunning report over at ABC about states confiscating funds from citizens' safety deposit boxes. This is crazy. The state of California actually confiscated one woman's family jewels from her safety deposit box and, even though she lived around the corner, paid her safety deposit boxes fees regularly and had her name and address clearly on the box, California took the jewels valued at $82,000 and sold them at auction for $1800. Where's the money go? Into the state's general fund aka the toilet.
  There's more here at ABC:

Seizing More Than Safe-Deposit Boxes

It's not just safe-deposit boxes. A British man went to retire and discovered the $4 million in U.S. stock he had been counting on had been seized and sold for $200,000 years earlier -- even though he was in touch with the company about other matters.

A Sacramento family lost out on railroad land rights their ancestors had owned for generations -- also sold off as unclaimed property.

"If I had hung onto it, I would be a millionaire, multimillionaire," said John Whitley. "But that didn't happen because we didn't get to hold it."

  Be sure to check out this link, where you can enter your name or names of friends to discover if they have unclaimed funds somewhere. You might be surprised what you'll find.