HookedOnOverages.com Presents.

The Insiders Guide to

Five-Figure Finder-Fees Locating Unclaimed Funds

www.HookedOnOverages.com

Copyright 2009, Abandoned Property, LLC

Legal Disclaimer

This report is intended to provide accurate and authoritative information on the subject of

locating and profiting from unclaimed funds. It is offered with the understanding that the

author is not an attorney or accountant, and is not offering legal or tax advice. Please consult

with an attorney in your area before you proceed with any of the suggestions found in this

book.

This report is intended for instructional purposes only. Every effort has been made to reflect

the applicable laws as of the date of the publication of this book. However, this is a dynamic

field of endeavor in which new laws are enacted, old laws revised and/or reinterpreted on a

continuing basis and where statutes, rulings, and case law is constantly changing.

Readers are advised to proceed with the techniques described herein with caution. The author,

printers, licensees, nor distributors make no warranties, express or implied about the

merchantability or fitness for any particular use of this product.

Copyright 2009

Published by

Abandoned Property, LLC PO Box 3348

Munster, IN 46321

http://www.hookedonoverages.com

All rights are reserved under State and Federal Copyright Law. No part of this book may be

reprinted, reproduced, paraphrased or quoted in whole or in part by any means without the

express written permission of the publisher and author.

Five-Figure Finder-FeesLocating Unclaimed Funds

Still making easy profits in todays market by buying properties on the MLS with

easy mortgage money and flipping?

Doubt it.

Gone are the days when short-term flipping profits were virtually guaranteed by

the swiftly rising market.

Real estate investors who survived the real estate bubble, or have just started

recently, are trying to ahead by using techniques for todays market short sales,

private money, even bulk REO purchases from banks.

What a royal pain! Especially when a couple simple techniques to profit today are

right in front of us.

Tax Sales

Tax sales are touted as the way to get easy profits just buy properties for the

amount of taxes owed.

I hope you realize that almost NEVER happens so easily. You will have to wait a

long time to acquire properties if you buy tax liens, and youll almost always have

to bid on properties if you buy tax deeds.

Tax liens almost always pay off, leaving no property. Tax deed bids can go sky-

high; on good properties, they will often be several times the initial minimum bid.

Whats the solution to all this if you want cheap property NOW without bidding?

Buy from the owner before the sale! There wont be anyone else there to bid

against you, and you can often get properties for barely more than the taxes

owed, straight from the owner (DeedGrabbing).

Want some more good news? You can profit HUGELY from properties that were

lost to tax sale in the past, or that you werent able to buy from the owner before

the tax sale. Read on to learn how.

Tax Sale Bidding

As I just mentioned, tax sale bidding keeps us from getting good deals at tax deed

sales (or at tax lien sales where bidding is involved). Frustrating! But it leads to

an incredible opportunity to profit without even buying, owning, or selling

property!

What if you could get involved today in a tax sale deal where you knew exactly

how much youd profit as soon as the paperwork was signed offand the payday

came in days or weeks, not months or years?

Its time we let the cat out of the bag. Were about to reveal how weve been

making easy, predictable profits in the tax sale arena for years, without upfront

investment, right alongside our DeedGrabbing business - finding and collecting

tax sale and mortgage foreclosure unclaimed funds.

Regular Unclaimed Funds

Youve probably heard about unclaimed funds. Closed bank accounts,

unredeemed gift cards, life insurance policies, and abandoned stock portfolios, to

name a few, are routinely handed over to your states unclaimed funds authority

each year.

You may have seen billboards or newspaper advertisements inviting you to search

for unclaimed funds that belong to you.

Its quite noble that these state authorities are making attempts to reunite the

money they have on hand with the rightful owners.

How do these funds relate to tax sales or real estate?

They dont!

Were not even going to be touching them.

Underground Unclaimed Funds From Tax Sales and Mortgage Foreclosures

Instead, well pursue a whole different class of underground funds that havent

even been turned over to the state yet which arose from past tax sales and

mortgage foreclosures. In many cases, these claims are 10-200 times the amount

of a typical claim advertised by the state.

Once we find the funds that fall into this special class, were going to reunite them

with their owner, and collect a 40% fee for doing so.

Are these underground unclaimed funds still being generated today?

You bet.

Weve received a bunch of nice-sized unclaimed funds checks recently, and were

happy to retain our 40% share. Heres one:

The unclaimed funds arena was always a reliable cash cow while we did our real

estate deals and now its an even bigger part of our yearly profits.

Read on to find how you can get involved too.

Why Tax Sale and Foreclosure Unclaimed Funds?

Were not going to be able to create 5-figure paychecks very easily with the

regular unclaimed funds that are on hand with our state.

Why? Most of the individual amounts on hand with the state are tiny under

$1000. And many states have tight caps on the amount you can charge to collect

these funds on behalf of an owner; as low as 5%.

Plus, states are launching huge advertising campaigns to make the public aware of

the unclaimed funds they may be entitled to.

Heres where our real estate background pays off.

It turns out that certain real-estate related events can result in a large amount of

cash being generated for the benefit of the former owner of a property. This cash

is often referred to as an overage.

These overage events include, but are not limited to:

Delinquent Tax Auctions

Mortgage Foreclosures

Condemnations

Eminent Domain Actions

Suits for Partition

Probates / Estates

And many more

Tax Sales and Mortgage foreclosures generate the most unclaimed funds in most

counties so were going to focus on those. As youre getting your lists of these

funds, youll discover other classes of funds like the ones mentioned above. You

can usually work those too while the county has them!

These overages are not sent to the state, at least not right away. They often linger

in various agencies at your county for years, ready to be collected.

Unlike most state unclaimed funds agencies, counties often do not publicize the

availability of these funds to the public.

In many cases, if the funds go uncollected, the agency holding the funds

permanently acquires them for their own use and does not have to turn them

over to the state.

Its called escheating, and many agencies appear to be perfectly happy to let

that happen.

Lets put a stop to that, and get those funds into the hands of their rightful owner.

How Tax Sale and Mortgage Foreclosure Funds are Created

Its actually pretty simple tax sale and foreclosure unclaimed funds are created

as a result of the bidding activity I just mentioned, which happens at many tax

deed sales and some tax lien sales.

Many times, for example, a $60,000 property will be offered at the sale for a

minimum bid of $5,000. When you attend the sale, youre disappointed to see

the property is bid up to $42,000, much more than youre willing to pay.

What about that extra $37,000 that was generated from the sale? In many cases,

its due to the former owner of the property, and the owner never comes forward

to collect it.

Were going to help them do just that.

Finding Underground Unclaimed Funds

Once weve identified all the events that can trigger an underground unclaimed

funds account, its time to put the law on our side.

Every state in the country has a public records access law or freedom of

information act which allows almost all public records to be viewed and copied.

After we determine which agencies may be holding large amounts of unclaimed

funds, we can do a public records request to discover exactly what funds are

currently on hand with the agency.

This isnt as simple as strolling into the agency and saying Hey do yall have a list

of unclaimed funds that I can grab real quick?

By doing our homework, we know exactly which agencies receive unclaimed

funds from time to time, and where the records that account for these funds are

kept.

Then, we know exactly what to ask for with our public records access request.

Do most of these agencies keep an unclaimed funds list lying around?

Usually not.

Can we easily make our own unclaimed funds list by requesting certain records

that are public information, or have the agency generate a list for us?

Yes.

Contacting the Owner of Found Money

Now its time for the fun part: informing an owner of found money that theyre

a couple pieces of paperwork away from receiving thousands of dollars they

didnt even know they had.

Well have lists of ready-to-collect unclaimed money from the appropriate

agencies.

And these lists will also contain the name of the person entitled to the money and

their last-known address, at minimum.

Why havent these folks collected the funds due them?

They dont know about them!

Were simply going to contact the potential recipients of this money by mail and

phone, and offer to throw thousands of dollars in their lap just for signing our

paperwork.

Often in a matter of days or weeks.

Of course, while were going to do a valuable service by connecting the owner of

unclaimed funds with their money, were not going to do it for free.

Well be happy to provide our services for a 40%-50% cut of the funds, and the

owner of the funds will be happy to receive the balance.

Collecting the Funds

Once weve gotten a missing recipient of unclaimed funds to sign our paperwork,

were in the home stretch.

Many times well just provide the paperwork to the agency holding the funds, and

a check will be in the mail to us in a matter of days. On a couple of occasions a

clerk has asked us to wait while a check was cut right then and there.

Other times, well get an attorney involved to collect the funds.

In either case, a check will likely be on its way to us in a short period of time.

Thats it! Cash the check, and give the client his 60% share of the funds.

The Training Program

In June 2009, we hosted our first Hooked on Overages training program and

weve seen dozens of checks sent in by students who are already successfully

working the found money business.

We sat down and put together:

Which states have tax sale and mortgage foreclosure overages

How to identify the agencies that hold these overages

The proper way to request the lists of overages these agencies have on hand

right now.

How to locate the recipients of these funds

What to say to say on the phone when you locate a potential recipient of

unclaimed cash

How to complete the paperwork necessary to make the claim

A few new seats are opening in the training in just a few days dont miss our

free 1-hour web class where Ill give more details on the found money business

from start to finish and at that time well accept a limited number of new

trainees. Keep your eye out for the next webinar, coming soon!

-Rick Dawson