The Money Finders Guide

The states currently owe money from abandoned property to an estimated one in
ten people in the United States, according to attorney David Epstein. But many
states do not have the resources to investigate every case, and do little more than
advertise names of owners in local newspapers. The resulting gap is sometimes
filled by professional “finders” or “heir searchers” who find the owners themselves
and charge a fee or commission in exchange for returning it. They can obtain lists,
legally in most cases but sometimes surreptitiously, of the names of the owners
from the state offices, then conduct their own search. Some finders have charged
commissions of 60% to 100%. The price of one finder’s fee in a past Colorado case
was 30% of the dividends and all the shares of stock.