Cash on the Web? This is no swindle

Hardly a day goes by that I don't get a pitch from some scam artist.

E-mails from Nigeria were awfully big for a while, with the writers concocting some scheme where they wanted you to help them get millions of dollars out of a foreign country.

Of course, you would share in those millions. But first you had to send them a little good-faith money or provide access to your bank accounts.

The foreign lotteries are still very popular.

So forgive me when I read an Associated Press story last week about $10 million deposited in Washington Mutual that went unclaimed after the bank failed in 2008.

It looked so much like a scam that I started searching for the hook, for the sentence that said if I sent a check for say, $50, I could get my big share of the $10 million.

But there was no hook. It's legitimate.

Bottom line: I'm a winner. And you can be, too.

The story had a Web site at the Washington state Department of Revenue (claimyourcash.org) to check to see if someone owes you money. And since it's part of my job to proofread that sort of information before we send it to readers, I went there and plugged in my name.

Sure enough, it popped up along with a former address.

The site didn't give an exact amount, but it says that I have between $25 and $50 coming back from something involving Group Health, my health care provider.

Apparently it's money that was at Washington Mutual, which was taken over by J.P Morgan Chase. Chase got the active accounts, but the inactive ones went to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The FDIC recently turned it over to the Department of Revenue, which is using its "claim your cash" site to help track people down.

I filled out a claim and, as gullible as this sounds, I assume that my check is in the mail.

Yours could be, too. And not just from Washington Mutual.

The state's database has more than 3 million names in it of people who are owed money. And it includes about $750 million from accounts that for one reason or another have been dormant for several years, said Mike Gowrylow, a spokesman for the Department of Revenue. He said nearly all states have such accounts.

"After three years of inactivity, businesses are required by law to turn the money over to the state," Gowrylow said.

During fiscal year 2010, which ended June 30, the state returned $44.5 million to 98,363 people, he said. Gowrylow noted that his name even showed up in the database with some money owed by an escrow company when he closed on a new mortgage.

In addition to real estate deals, money shows up from uncashed checks, security deposits that couldn't be refunded by utilities, the contents of safety deposit boxes, uncashed rebates and a lot of other things, Gowrylow said.

He said the issue got national attention decades ago after the popular actor and comedian W.C. Fields died on Christmas Day in 1946 and it was discovered that he had squirreled away money in banks all across the country.

"His heirs had a heck of a time finding it," Gowrylow said. "It led to a national effort to make sure the money just didn't sit around in accounts in banks or that banks couldn't just keep it."

Gowrylow said the state has made an effort in recent years to make sure that businesses know they need to report idle accounts. And he added that increasing use of the Internet has made it a lot easier to return the money.

"We used to go to county fairs with a computer so people could look up whether they were owed any money," Gowrylow said. "It was fun."

Now it's lot easier to check it yourself. And you should.

If you want to check it and you don't have an Internet connection, you can go to the public library and use its connection or call 800-435-2429.

Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459; benbow@heraldnet.com.