Audrey Quinn

Delaware has made some changes that theoretically would have helped someone like Walter. The state actually does now require a letter to go out to a person before their property gets a sheeted.

Why the three years or why five years?

Can I tell you specifically the story that I'm working on? Okay. So for this piece, I talked to this guy.

So your thinking was, if we can't beat them, join them?

It just doesn't quite make sense to me of why not checking your stock for a few years can carry such a heavy penalty.

And of course, Walter had a characteristically chill investment strategy. Buy this stock and then just let it sit. He made a point not to log into the E-Trade account that held his shares.

I talked to the lawyer for two French investors who lost $13 million from Eschete. For cases like that, lawyers are interested. For Walters, they were not.

So you're just going to wait until it's worth even more?

In the meantime, Walter has found a different investing approach. He's bought into Google and Facebook through a firm based in Europe, where they do not have sheet accounts.

Special thanks to David Knott, Ethan Miller, Randy Hotz, Wilson Barmeyer, Cindy Nisley, and Bill Palmer. I'm Audrey Quinn.

Do you remember what you saw when you logged in?

So Walter calls up E-Trade to say, where are my shares?

Walter is like, okay.

Walter calls them up.

I think it's S-Eat.

And I'm Audrey Quinn. Our government ends up with a stunning amount of our stuff. Stocks, paychecks, bank accounts.

A few months ago, I heard about a guy who had a small fortune taken from him, Walter Schramm.

First thing I needed to ask you is how do you say escheat? Escheat. Can you say it one more time? Escheat.

If a sheet sounds archaic, that's because it goes back to feudal England. It's essentially the act of the state taking control of property on behalf of its citizens.

Yes. We forget about retirement accounts, insurance policies, safe deposit boxes. When you forget about stuff like that, after a certain amount of time, the state is able to step in, take ownership of your unclaimed stuff, and hold on to it until you can come and claim it.

What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen as she did?

This is my favorite part of this whole thing. Because states all over the country still keep these lists of missing stuff, just now with a website, not a newspaper ad. And this brings us to my new favorite party trick, which I'm going to do right now with Kenny.

What state have you probably spent the most time in in recent years?

Okay, so I want you to look up Lost Money, Florida.

Okay, type your name into the little search box.

Kenny, you have a missing paycheck.

I found $800.

The point is that you listening at home, you should look yourself up. You may have left behind a paycheck, utility credits, bank account you thought you closed. Your state has stepped in and is holding that money for you.

Walter is very chill. And ironically, it's that trait that both brought him a small fortune and cost him it.

Some version of this happens in every state for all kinds of companies. At the end of the year, companies have to report seemingly abandoned money to the state. The state takes control. Boom, the money goes to the financial lost and found.

Unclaimed property is the fifth largest source of revenue for California. It's the third largest source of revenue for Delaware. Unclaimed property all across the country helps fund public programs, which might seem like a good thing, but it can create some perverse incentives.

Yeah, it just seems like a conflict of interest.

The amount of unclaimed money states take in every year, it's going up. And states have gotten a lot more aggressive in how they take the money in the first place.

Is there like a Sure.

Jennifer says states are getting looser with their standards about what qualifies as abandoned property.

Also, in a lot of states, the length of time before your account is deemed inactive, it's been shrinking. States are stepping in more quickly to helpfully take a hold of your money.

At first, it seemed like things were going really well. Except for that, around the same time, another online retailer launched. Amazon. Amazon. They were bigger, seemed to have endless money. They're not even worried about turning a profit at this point.

Walter's very patient investment philosophy, buy stock, then check back in 20 years. He thought he was being a smart investor. The state of Delaware thought he'd forgotten about his stock. They issued it back in 2008. They hadn't told him.

But with abandoned stocks or bonds, the state takes control of your investment and it doesn't want to become your portfolio manager. So it cashes out your investments, just holds on to that money for you.

Delaware sold his Amazon shares in 2008. which was before Amazon had become Amazon. Walter got the Delaware unclaimed property office on the phone, and they invited him to file a claim for the 2008 value of his stock.

It's actually now worth even more than that. Walter hasn't checked the Amazon stock price in a while. It's too depressing.

After talking to Walter and our sheet lawyer, Jennifer, there were two main things we wanted to ask Brenda about.

Does your office feel any pressure to make sure that money keeps coming in?

I guess what I'm getting at here is that at a certain point, it kind of just seems like the state is grabbing somebody's money.

Brenda says fundamentally, this is a way to look out for consumers, to safely take forgotten money out of companies' hands and keep it in a place where people can get their money back easily.