Always Answer the Phone

Someone might be trying to give you $763,000

Sometimes when the phone rings, it’s easier not to answer. Occasionally, it’s a debt collector. Sometimes, it’s your mother, calling to ask if you went to the doctor or called the dentist. Most of the time, it’s a wrong number, looking for someone named Charley, maybe, or possibly Katie, looking for someone who is definitely not you. The impulse to let it go to voicemail is very real and one that I indulge every time my phone rings. Usually it’s nothing — an automated number telling me that I have a deal on car insurance for a car that I definitely don’t own because I don’t know how to drive. But answering the phone could be a solid way to pick up some extra money, especially if $763,000 in your name is sitting unclaimed, waiting for you to respond.

Man Collects $763,000 He Thought Was a Scam

Curtis Loftis, state treasurer of South Carolina, doggedly pursued a man in order to give him the $763,000 he was owed by the state. It sounds like it took a while, though, because the oldest scam in the book is that phone call or email or carrier pigeon that informs you of free money.

Follow this thread: The man’s mother remarried after his father died. Because of confusion about the son’s surname, the money was never sent to him. Instead, it sat around in a lawyer’s office, before eventually being sent to Mr. Loftis’s office, which then set out to track down the recipient.

To find him, Mr. Loftis, who is also the president of the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, found another relative that had passed away in South Carolina. The man’s last name appeared on that relative’s tombstone. Mr. Loftis then used Facebook to find the son of the man Mr. Loftis was looking for. The son told his father, who then skeptically called Mr. Loftis. It took multiple conversations to convince the man that this was real. Mr. Loftis even offered to drive to a Starbucks to meet him in public to prove it wasn’t a scam.

There’s money out there — “boatloads” of unclaimed funds — waiting for the person to whom it rightfully belongs to claim it. Every state has their own website for these unclaimed funds, most of which are unclaimed due to the tiny administrative details of life falling through the cracks: “clerical errors, botched mail deliveries or just the wrong address on file.” Shortly after reading this, I searched my name on MissingMoney.com to see if I’d be as lucky. I combed through five pages of Megan Reynolds but didn’t find myself.

What do you do if you wake up one morning, answer the phone and get $763,000 handed to you out of the blue? Do you look for missing money? Is this something you think about, ever?

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