The News10NBC Team details breaking News, Traffic and Weather.<\/p>\n
ROCHESTER, N.Y. \u2013 More and more people are receiving letters from Social Security saying they may be owed pension or 401(k) money but they can\u2019t find the money.<\/p>\n
The letters from Social Security tell people to contact the plan administrators which don\u2019t exist. Then they say contact the federal Department of Labor which, in our experience, doesn\u2019t have the information. But today we learned about one more option people can use to try to find this money.<\/p>\n
The letters say \u201cpotential private retirement benefit information.\u201d It alerted Bill Oatman that he\u2019s owed more than $8,000 in a 401(k).<\/p>\n
\u201cEight grand. Free money. Works for me,\u201d Oatman said with a smile. \u201cGive it to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The problem is he can\u2019t find it. Neither can Deb North who was told she could get $118 from a pension of the bankrupt shoe company she managed back in the 80s called Altier\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Berkeley Brean: \u201cYou can\u2019t be the only one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Deb North, can\u2019t locate old Altier Shoes pension money: \u201cNo, the lady I spoke with in D.C. said there had been four other recent inquiries regarding this retirement plan for salaried employees at Altier\u2019s and Sons.\u201d<\/p>\n
The letters tell people to contact the plan administrator. For Bill, that\u2019s a private home in Pittsford. For Deb, it\u2019s the shoe company\u2019s old warehouse in Henrietta. Then they tell them to contact the federal Department of Labor.<\/p>\n
Berkeley Brean: \u201cAnd when you did that, did they have any answers for you?\u201d
Bill Oatman: \u201cNo, they basically had all this information that is on here.\u201d<\/p>\n
An alert viewer pointed Brean to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation<\/a>. It\u2019s an option for people who got the letters. And then there\u2019s the fact that the federal records might be old and the money was already paid out. The Pension Corporation warns \u201cyou may have already received some or all\u201d of the money.\u201d<\/p>\n Bill Oatman: \u201cThere\u2019s unfortunately no way to know one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n Berkeley Brean: \u201cSo it could be a big tease.\u201d<\/p>\n Bill Oatman: \u201cCould be a phantom, yeah. Could be. But for eight grand \u2013 why not look?\u201d<\/p>\n Lots of people get these letters. Any time a person files for Social Security, the IRS looks for money they might be owed. If it finds some, it triggers one of these letters.<\/p>\n AI assisted with the formatting of this story. Click here<\/a> to see how WHEC News 10 uses AI<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFor Related Stories:\u00a0Rush<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0pensions<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0social security letters<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The News10NBC Team details breaking News, Traffic and Weather. ROCHESTER, N.Y. \u2013 More and more people are receiving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,147,530],"class_list":["post-19488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I emailed PBGC with a list of every plan administrator listed on every letter shared with me.
What did they tell me in an email reply? \u201cContact the Department of Labor\u2019s Office<\/a> of Public Affairs.\u201d<\/p>\n