(Raleigh, N.C.) – Woods Charter School in Chatham County is still feeling the lingering financial pinch of the COVID pandemic, so when State Treasurer Dale R. Folwell, CPA, showed up with a check in hand it was a welcome blessing.
Treasurer Folwell went to the school Wednesday, Oct. 26, to return missing funds that ended up in the Department of State Treasurer’s (DST) Unclaimed Property Division (UPD), commonly called NCCash.com.
“As a school we take pride in being smart and frugal with every dollar earned and spent. It was a surprise — but a welcomed one — when we were alerted that we had unclaimed property held at the State Treasurer’s Office,” said Woods Charter Principal Cotton Bryan.
“The process for claiming these funds was simple and efficient, and we’re grateful for Treasurer Folwell and his team for prioritizing this initiative. Helping our students and teachers emerge from the pandemic has been no easy task, so we’re very thankful for any extra monies we can get to help us along in this endeavor,” Bryan said.
While at Woods Charter, a K-12 public charter school with an enrollment of 512, founded in 1998, Treasurer Folwell also spoke to fourth grade students.
“It’s always a pleasure to gather with young people to give them some insight about state government. They can be inquisitive, and you never know what questions they will throw at you,” Treasurer Folwell said.
“At the Department of State Treasurer, we provide health care and retirement benefits to their teachers and staff,” Treasurer Folwell said. “We are delighted that our Unclaimed Property Division was able to make the day even more rewarding by finding $3,053 in our possession that we were able to return to the school.
NCCash is the repository for 17.7 million properties valued at $1.02 billion under DST’s custody. The money is awaiting return to the rightful owners after being lost, misdirected or overlooked, and more than 19 million owners are associated with those properties. In Chatham County, there are 66,475 properties valued at more than $6.7 million waiting to be claimed.
UPD paid 178,857 claims amounting to more than $105 million during the 2022 fiscal year that ended June 30. Both numbers were historical records. The returns are on pace to set another record this fiscal year. Through Sept. 30, UPD has paid 45,262 claims totaling nearly $28.1 million from NCCash. Part of that total has been disbursed through the NCCash Match program, a no-hassle, expedited system that eliminated paperwork processing. As of Sept. 30, DST paid 25,058 Cash Match claims totaling nearly $8.4 million.
Under state law, UPD receives and safeguards funds that are escheated, or turned over, to DST. The unclaimed property consists of bank accounts, wages, utility deposits, insurance policy proceeds, stocks, bonds and contents of safe deposit boxes that have been abandoned.
Unclaimed property can result from a person or entity forgetting they are due money, or from a move of location and forgetting to provide a new address. It also could result from a typing error in a house number or zip code in an address, a name change, or data loss from a business converting its computer system. As society becomes more mobile and steadily moves to electronic transactions, the risk of having unclaimed property has increased.
More information, including how to find out if you are owed money, can be found at https://www.nccash.com/.
