My attention today shall be on entrepreneurial minded ones out there who are willing to help and of course get paid for their services. So read with an open mind if you need such services or if you want to add this to your income sources as a finder.
Honest Finders vs. Vultures
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! Finders can, however, perform a valuable service by reuniting people with money that would have been lost to them forever. Because of cases where these finders have charged excessive fees to people for returning their own money, and because of the strain their demands have put on some already over-burdened state offices, the finders have a shady reputation in some quarters.
One state office, for example, refers to them as "bounty hunters," and another calls them "vultures." Many state offices feel that the finders infringe on the owner's right to have their money returned with no charge involved, which is the goal of the state.
The National Association of Abandoned Property Administrators says that since the states never find 100% of the owners) there is a place for honest finders. For example, if a state is unable to locate the owner of a sizable property that they did not even know about, and a finder does the job, then a service has been performed.
Many states, such as Texas, limit the amount of commission a finder may charge; and others have confidentiality laws that prevent them from aiding finders in any way. One of the biggest obstacles states face is obtaining the cooperation of the banks, insurance companies, and other institutions in reporting properties to them.
Despite laws that govern how a holding institution should deal with dormant accounts, they are often low priority items in a business. The states use to sometimes have to work very hard to convince unclaimed fund holders that they were best qualified to return the money.
All 50 of the United States have passed laws that penalize lax holding companies by charging them a fee. With billions of dollars in property sitting around out there unclaimed, clearly many people have an interest in what happens to it.
Finders, keepers, states and businesses all have something at stake, and the losers will be those who fail to take advantage of the services that are available. For the entrepreneurial minded individual, the finder’s fee opportunity represents the obvious “no-brainer” stake.
You can also get a peaceful good paying job from the link below particularly if you want to control your working hours and not the 9-5pm type.
http://adfoc.us/16795830429955
No comments:
Post a Comment