Update: [www.wisn.com]

Chase(or actually Bank One) did what the law requires them to do. People get their stuff in a bundle when the law isn't followed in some circumstances. This should be no different. In fact, the predecessor of Chase, in this case, Bank One, actually turned over the funds to the state, as required by law. And this happened long before Chase was even in the picture.

These banks get audited all the time, and cannot get away with not following these rules. So no matter how badly you might feel for the lady in this story, and she has a legitimate complaint, it's with the State of Wisconsin.

Having a family member who works in retail banking for Chase and their predecessors, I know that prior to turning anything over to the State, Chase, their predecessor Bank One, and before that Marine Bank here in Wisconsin always makes a very thorough effort to locate folks before turning over funds to the state just to try to avoid this type of thing. And their compliance is compelled by law and monitored via the audits they go through. So why should Chase shareholders pay for the incompetence of the Wisconsin State Treasurers Office, or this poor lady's mistrust of banks?

Let's place the blame where it belongs, no matter how badly we feel for this lady. And shame on her attorney. She, better than anyone should know, or could find out with 10 minutes worth of research, that their cause of action lies with the State and not the bank.

What I don't understand is this. I think it's safe to assume that she doesn't trust the bank if she doesn't put her money there. Then why did she put it in a safe deposit box IN A BANK? She was using the bank either way. What difference did it make, besides allowing her to collect interest on $20k if she had done the responsible thing?

Stupid people are everywhere. They get taken all the time.

We can all feel sorry for this lady but she is an idiot.

I still think chase should honor the check though. WTF is 19k to them. It will cost them a lot more in bad publicity.

Think that matters? Their wages can just be garnished, their money will be taken before they even see their check.

In the end, this is a pretty messed up thing. The interesting question is whether they actually informed the person of this taking place or it saying it on the check. The state can't seem to find a record of them getting that money, is the bank trying to keep it all? Is this the only case of Chase not sending money to the state?

@Keter: S&L's weren't banks. Neither are credit unions.

@CaffeinatedSquint: Credit unions are NOT more secure.

How can it be "unjust enrichment" if the bank gave it to the state. I'm not saying it's right, but the bank didn't make any profit beyond the fee for issuing a cashier's check.

Moral of the story, get cash and put it in a private vault.

I have a box at a private vault that I keep all kinds of valuables and documents in. As long as the bill is paid the vault is happy. When I die, the only people that have access to the box is people I have designated on the entry card. If I had a box at a bank and died, the "man" would want to have a looksee in it first.

I'm sure is what happened is this lawyer caught wind of the story somehow and saw a chance to score a bunch of $$$ from a settlement, probably claiming mental distress or some BS like that. I can understand a person of that age not wanting to have to deal with all the extra legwork and hiring a lawyer (hell, a paralegal could take care of this) or enlisting the help of a relative to get the information everyone needs. But this lawsuit idiocy has just got to stop.

In any case, the money left Chase, or whatever prior bank it was, when the cashier's check was drawn all those years ago. Asking Chase to be accountable for a cashier's check they produced in good faith more than 20 years ago is beyond ridiculous. The attorney who agreed to take on this case would have done much better to help this woman trace the funds through each step than this idiotic public crusade. Banks generally keep records for about seven years, but the companies that the banks hire to process their cashier's checks may have more. I feel bad for this person, but as many here have pointed out, her deceased husband really screwed her over on this one, on more than one account.

It's a sad story, but I can't say that I'm particularly sympathetic.

FOrgot to mention that when they open one up.... they at least attempt to find the rightfull owner of the property, but if you have $500,000 in cash in there.... the IRS is going to want to know of it is legitimately earned/taxed. I THINK the no cash rule about safe deposit boxes is because some people use them to hide money they earned illegally. My local bank says that you cant keep valuable coins in one either... i have no idea why though.

Note: IF you have a safe deposit box... ALWAYS ALWAYS have info in it as to whom the stuff belongs to & next of kin info etc. etc..... unless you are a drug dealer keeping gobs of illegally earned cash in it.... hate to bring the wrath of the IRS down upon your innocent relatives.

@Bryan Price:

Correct, but most banks have policies as to what is allowed in a safe deposit box. Sure... you could keep anthrax or dynomite in one if you so wanted as they dont know what you've put in there.

@synergy: article says they were worried about a fire at their home, more likely to happen than at a bank.

Besides not trusting a bank to keep her money, she was PAYING to keep money in a box. Wouldn't it have been just as safe in a box in her possesssion or on her property if she has property?

I keep my money at the bank only because none of it is mine anyway, so why bother going to the trouble of handling it when I won't get to keep it? It makes it easier to make the bank send out checks I don't have to buy for all my bills.

Having never owned a safe deposit box, I believe you may put anything you want into them. There is nobody there that is supposed to be seeing what you put in and take out of a safe deposit box. That's part of what you are getting.

And the only time I'm aware of that they open up a deposit box is -- tada -- after five years of non-payment of rent, it's considered abandoned and the state collects the contents for their unclaimed funds division.

It used to be that (in Ohio at least) they would keep the valuable items intact, but that has changed over the years, and they now sell the items (coins, jewelry, stock certificates) for money pretty much immediately. You also used to get interest, but they've stopped paying that last time I looked.

My point is, a LOT of people are bank-o-phobic; old, young, white, black, brown, whoever that is kinda just getting by.

The big however is, what happened to that money? Surely the bank has a record of sending that money to their state's version of Unclaimed Funds, and surely Mrs. Floyd can show that she has legitimate claim to the money because she holds the original document, which should mean a wait of no more than four weeks to get her money back. That was the time given to applicants to get their money (although it only took one week for my measly 50 bucks that I found I was owed).

So they should be able to very quickly point her to what she needs to do to claim it. Unless they didn't file with the state and hand the funds over. There have been some definite shenanigans that various financial institutions have used to try and keep that kind of money (and keeping the rightful owners from collecting!)

@sacrabos:

A lot of banks wont let you keep cash/coins in a safe deposit box. And when it comes time to open it & inspect the contents of an overdue account.... there is usually a government rep present to note any amount of cash that may be in there & determine if it is a "fishy" enough amount to investigate if it is ill-gotten gains. Safe deposit boxes arent the end-all-beat-all they are supossedly cracked up to be. I'd keep only personal documents in a safe deposit box... not anything valuable.

But if there is any lesson from this story, it's to help older family members manage their money.

I can NOT believe some of the responses here.

"Too bad, but it's the law"? Forty years ago, it was the law for Mrs. Floyd to sit at the back of the bus. I guess that makes Chase bank's actions alright then, does it?

Here's a better question: Why don't banks tell their customers that cheques expire or what the law is? Answer: Because they couldn't get away with confiscating depositors' money and calling it their own.

Whatever happened to common decency? Forget "the law": This woman is retired and living off the money. What sort of company is willing to say, "Screw you, starve to death", and what sort of people are willing to stand by while they do it? Chase bank should be shamed publicly and held upside down by their collective ankles until her $20,000 is collected.

I've long been an advocate of an independent agency (no lobbying, no political party affiliation) that reviews "mistakes" made by insurance companies. If an insurance company makes a mistake and then fails to correct it after being asked, the company must pay the affected party 10 times the amount in question. In other words, make it extremely expensive for mistakes to not get corrected. Maybe if you applied the same rule to banks, we'd see a lot less of these kind of screw-ups.

Once I opened an account with a small bank near my home to save gas when the credit union branch I had been using lost its lease, and almost immediately regretted it when the bank held a deposit - my paycheck, right before Christmas - for two weeks and ruined the holidays (I had to use my Christmas savings to pay bills instead of buy gifts and foods). I closed the account, and they "waived" the fees for closing the account. (There were FEES for closing the account after they screwed up!!!)

Three years later, the bank sold to another bank, and those "waived" fees suddenly showed up as an unpaid debt against me! I had one heck of an interesting conversation with the Texas Attorney General's office, and the buying bank backed down. And another three years later, the same thing happened again! No, banks are evil, and any sane person should distrust them to the point of never having anything to do with them. Ever.

She isn't going to get anything, if she does, it will be from the government.

Her lawsuit against chase will be dismissed, I really really do feel bad for her.

Unless Chase decides to be charitable and for all points and purposes, donate this kind of money to her, she won't be getting anything, and thats a shame.

These stories are so painful. I hope this can be resolved for her.

And now I'm going to go check my online banking for the umpteenth time to see what little I have after bills....

Now that it's in the news the state will miraculously "recover" the funds and she will be taken care of.

But to that extent I'm willing to bet that if the picture was of a old white lady more people would reply with sympathy than, "but if...".

@fesslove: Hell, Chase won't process a US drawn check if the teller's have never heard of the bank.

@Hanke: This isn't the case with this lady, so why even bring it up?

"I left a cashier's check in a safe deposit box at Chase for so long that the government took the money. Chase let me cash the check anyway, and now I have my retirement money. I feel safe using Chase bank, and I'll always use them."

How much does Chase spend on advertising each year? Millions. Who traditionally has the biggest savings accounts? Seniors. How many seniors responding to this ad would it take to recoup the $19,000? Not many.

It's mind blowing how many corporations miss the opportunities that turn into bad PR.

@Index4life: Yeah, I was trying to think of the least thing you could do, if you knew nothing about money and told the bank that you didn't need it for a while.

Doesnt her state have an "unclaimed property" database? You know.... for money that is owed to a person (even a dead person) & is kept on file in case the person comes forward to claim it.

In my state.... you can even claim unclaimed/mislaid funds for a deceased relative.

Laws are setup that unclaimed money be turned over to the state. A check that goes uncashed is considered lost/abandanded, and the bank does not profit from this (other then probable intrest gained while waiting for the check to go uncashed), but at that point the money and/or property is turned over to the state.

I'm not sure how it works in other states - but here in Illinois, in the past few years has been working hard in trying to find who owns the unclaimed stuff - [www.cashdash.net]

I see my great-grandmother has something worth under $100 unclaimed... but I have not done anything yet to claim it.

Anyway, it is a shame - but I don't see how Chase is to blame - they need to go after the state in trying to get the claim of the money.

@testsicles:

Screw the CDs. Had she dumped the money in the Dow (all blue chips, by definition) and forgotten about it that $19,700 would be worth ~$220,000 today. It pains me to even think about that.

@nequam:
Was that bank a Chase when he drew the check? That can explain the lack of a proper record.

@Saboth: Hit the nail on the head there; my brother works for NYC Sanitation, and he indicates that the lack of bank accounts is the reason why his department doesn't offer direct deposit, because the workers are 'all' apparently avoiding court orders of some time.

All the Consumerist needs today is a story about a 97-year-old suing Reynolds Wrap because their tinfoil didn't successfully block government mind-reading rays. Then we'll have the complete trifecta of pandering to old people against big corporations even when they did the stupid or illegal thing. And half of the commenters here will probably be on that old person's side too.

I thought states had records of unclaimed property? And shouldn't the bank have a record also? In a culture of CYA, both sides should have records, or am I missing something?

Unclaimed checks are considered "abandoned property" and companies are required to "escheat" abandoned property to the state. State laws vary but in New York requires abandoned property to be turned over after three years. The assumption is that companies may fold or close but government is forever!

Besides the law, what companies do this is to clear their books. A company writes a check, at the end of the month, its bank sends a statement. Some checks are unclaimed, the company's books don't balance. The unclaimed amount gets carried over into the following month. Do this for thousands of checks over months and years and what the company's books say and what its bank accounts says become very, very different. So after a number of years, the company will escheat abandoned property to the state (or states) and "clear" the books of those checks because money has actually left its bank account (albeit to the state). The company's books and its bank statement should then, in principle, balance.

I highly doubt that the bank "took" her money as doing so would have also unbalance its books.

The problem is tracing a 22 year old check that was likely turned over to a state over 15 years ago. It's a problem with records ~ either the bank or the state.

@rectilnear propagation: I meant to say I cant blame either one without more information. There should be documentation showing where the money went. If the state cant provide information on the unclaimed property, and Chase cant provide proof they handed it over, then it on the shoulders of Chase. If either party can provide good evidence the funds were handed over, its the government. the problem is, something like this will be hard to find due to the size of the company and the fact that this is a 10 year old check. This lady IS getting the shaft, the question is, by who?

Instead, bubka.

@nequam: I need a spell checker

@socalrob: This woman's situation is different. She was not deemed to have abondoned what was in her safe deposit box but, rather, she's holding a check that expired. The safe deposit box has nothing to do with the story excpet to explain how she has a check that went unchased for 22 years. If the husband drew the cashier's check from Chase, he must have had an account there. It was that account that would have been considered abandoned. So there are really two issues here: (1) a check that expired and; (2) an account with Chase that was untouched for at least 22 years.

@RECTILINEAR PROPAGATION: I think thats what she is getting it: if she had buried the money she would still have it.

While I feel bad for her, I do have to agree that the bank did nothing wrong here. Who keeps a check for that long? At the very least, cash it and put the cash somewhere.

Strange stuff.

Why did she wait so long to cash it?

This database has 79 instances of abandoned property under "Willie Floyd". [www.missingmoney.com]

Surely the lawyer checked each one of these?

Yeah, but if she'd done that the money would probably still be there.

@fesslove: Why not? Like you just said, if the state has it there should be a record of it. So either the state has the unclaimed money but doesn't have a record of it or Chase never turned over the money even though they're claiming they did.

that didn't take long.. god forbid someone at the bank perform the same search.. then this poor woman might have her money..

um...wtf do you store a check in a safe deposit box instead of cashing it and putting it in the bank?

Not for nothing, but a Willie Floyd has unclaimed property with the state of Wisconsin. I wonder if its her.

These state abondonment laws are a joke, almost infringing on illegal it seems. I understand why they were written, which in California it seems they were written to keep the bank or other financial institution from profiting from something like what this woman had in her safe deposit box.

Washington Mutual did this to my girlfriends parents. Even though they had an open and working and often used bank account with Wamu, along with a safe deposit box, someone decided at the bank that the safe deposit box was abondoned, never bothered to attempt to contact them, and sent over 15k worth of stocks, bonds etc to the state.

Wamu is refusing to help now and the state cant find any record of it and needs information from the bank. Its a mess. I'd say keep your money under your mattress or in a safe in your house, but we all know how that ends if the police come in and find something illegal.

All your money belongs to us!

"Unjust enrichment" indeed. If the old lady had owed a debt that was overlooked or something, that's one thing. The bank just took advantage of a bullshit technicality and got money it WASN'T owed -- money it should never have been able to get. Stupid banks.

Under state law, the check was considered abandoned. Thats unfortunate. If the money was turned over to the state, then there should be a record somewhere. I can't really blame the state or chase for this though. Chase claims they did what they were legally required to do, and to be quite honest, a bank as large as chase finding what happened to the money on ONE check from TEN years ago could pose problems. I feel sorry for the lady, but in reality, ignorance of the law is no excuse. I hope this ends up well for the lady

Crazy lady did what? I love the "We filed a lawsuit to get their attention" part. I bet she winds up paying most of the money to the lawyer if she ever gets it back.

Ask anyone born before 1920 and they have a inherent distrust of banks and ANYONE suggesting they use them. They also have a tendency to stock up large amounts of non-perishables.

Both my grandmothers where like that, and not surprisingly bother went through the great depression. They kinda got over their bank fears, but they where still there and we often found a lot of money around their houses despite also having money in the bank.