Hello NY Folks I was approached by a gentleman at the Petroleum Club last night about some unclaimed property his family supposedly has in NY. They are a very old family, Stein I believe is the name, who owned the largest department store and clothing manufacturing businesses in the city pre-depression. His father died last year, and not long afterwards he started receiving letters about unclaimed property, but each letter asks for funds in advance to help him find the property.

He thought it was probably a scam, and I agreed, but also told him there are ways to search out unclaimed property in each state. This is obviously not my area of expertise! Because of his families LONG history in NY, it's entirely likely they do have some unclaimed property out there. So, my question is, can you lead me to a location for him to search in your state? Or, does NY send out letters asking for money to provide unclaimed property? He said it is on "official looking" letterhead...but I'm sceptical about that

Have them try this website from the NYS Controllers Office:
http://www.osc.state.ny.us/cgi-bin/db2www/ouffrm.d2w/input

I'm not a NY banker but I did a search on Google.com and came up with the following web page for the NY State Comptroller's office that should help.

http://www.osc.state.ny.us/cgi-bin/db2www/ouffrm.d2w/input

Dawnie - Try www.osc.state.ny.us/ for FAQ's about unclaimed property in NYS as well as instructions about how to claim the property. As far as I know, NYS does not send out letters, it is up to the FI with the property to do so. Notices are generally placed in the classified section of local newspapers too. On the web site, your gentleman friend can perform a search for unclaimed property at no charge. maybe he'll buy you a drink if he finds some cash

Thank you all! I told him I "knew" some folks in NY who would be helpful

And I also told him I'd give him the info, as long as he paid me one dollar less than the fee in the letter LOL (that would be $24). I'll settle for making a clients life easier....and probably a glass of wine

Update:

Thanks for your help on this. We found a certificate of deposit that was sitting unclaimed in the name of my clients father.

Unfortunately a search of my family name indicated we have nothing on hold for us

Glad to help out, and it's nice to hear your client found something. We are in the middle of a state audit on abandoned property right now and I will let our staff know that their good work in getting the accounts correctly to the state does pay off.