{"id":349986,"date":"2026-09-18T05:20:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T05:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/349986\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T05:20:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T05:20:43","slug":"news-12-long-island-231","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/349986\/","title":{"rendered":"News 12 | Long Island"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Millions of dollars in unclaimed funds are waiting to be returned to Long Islanders, and state officials say checking whether you are owed money takes just a few minutes.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">The New York State Comptroller\u2019s <a data-rich-text-hyperlink=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.osc.ny.gov\/unclaimed-funds\/map\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Office of Unclaimed Funds<\/a> says more than 5 million people in Nassau and Suffolk counties are owed a combined $1.6 billion.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">The office hosted an event Wednesday evening at the Copiague Memorial Public Library to teach residents how to search for and claim their money.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Unclaimed funds can come from a variety of sources, including old bank accounts, utility deposits, insurance benefits, uncashed checks and unused gift cards.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">The state comptroller\u2019s office returns an average of more than $2 million in unclaimed funds every day. Since January, the office has returned more than $490 million to rightful owners.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Residents who find money in their name can submit a claim by providing the required documentation. The Comptroller\u2019s Office says most claims are paid within 30 days.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">&#8220;No one wants to lose money, and we want to make sure if you do, you know you can always claim it by going to our website,&#8221; state Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said. &#8220;Funds sent to our office never expire and are free to claim.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Search for unclaimed funds and the steps to submit a claim through the New York State Comptroller\u2019s Office of Unclaimed Funds: <a data-rich-text-hyperlink=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/ouf.osc.ny.gov\/app\/claim-search\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Claim Search<\/a><\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Residents can also call the Office of Unclaimed Funds at 1-800-221-9311.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Millions of dollars in unclaimed funds are waiting to be returned to Long Islanders, and state officials say&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":["post-349986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}