Greenwood family surprised with money

GREENWOOD, Ind. (WISH) — Thousands of people in central Indiana are owed money, but they might not know it.

The Indiana Attorney General’s office runs a program called Indiana Unclaimed to help connect Hoosiers with their cash.

Millions of dollars are ready to be claimed, people just have to know about it and go through the claims process.

It’s simple to search for a name on www.indianaunclaimed.gov.

Cindy Webb of Greenwood took a chance, even though she was skeptical.

“You said there’d be unclaimed money, that my husband had some unclaimed money, and so I got online and looked at it and sure enough there was some,” she said.

Her husband was owed about $40 from a Sirius XM account he wasn’t even aware existed.

“Unless somebody told you about it that had claimed money or used the website, you wouldn’t know about it,” she said.

The money owed to people in her city of Greenwood is just a fraction of what’s owed to people across this region.

In central Indiana alone, people are owed $185 million worth of property and cash.

Cindy went through the process of claiming her $40. To her, it was worth the time and effort.

“It ended up being pretty simple to print off the claim, fill it out, make a copy of a utility bill to prove that he lived here, and send it in,” she said, “If it’d been a lot of hassle or a lot of work, I probably wouldn’t have done it.”

She also looked up all her family and friends on the website and discovered that her daughter-in-law was owed about $12.

For that amount, the process might not be worth it to many people, but some of the amounts owed are more than $100.

Cindy’s advice is that you should at least take a look.

“That’s amazing, I mean, it’s worth typing your name in just to see,” she said.

Even if you don’t think you have money, it’s free to just type your name into the website and check.