BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – Tens of thousands of Louisiana residents will be receiving checks in the mail from the state, not tax refunds, but other unclaimed property dollars collected by the treasury.
Treasurer John Schroder’s office said Tuesday that more than 44,500 checks, totaling $4.2 million, started going out this week. The maximum check is $1,500.
Schroder wants to make sure people don’t think it is part of a scam and throw the checks away. He said if someone receives a check with the state seal on it, “take it to the bank.”
“This is not a scam. This is real money that belongs to you,” Schroder said in a statement.
Dollars in the unclaimed property fund come from old savings and checking accounts, payroll checks, stocks and dividends, insurance proceeds, oil royalty payments and utility deposits that aren’t immediately claimed by their owners.
The treasurer’s office tries to locate people and return the money.
Under a 2018 law, the state revenue department shared its address database with the treasury to locate people owed money. That cross-referencing led to 85,000 checks totaling $15 million mailed in October and checks this week checks totaling $4.2 million.
