Tax refunds aren’t the only way Oregonians can reunite with their long-lost money this February. Ever wondered what happens to lost payroll checks or long-forgotten security deposits or undeposited tax refunds?

The Oregon State Treasury will return $10 million to its rightful owners this month as part of its Checks without Claims initiative, which aims to connect people with their unclaimed funds held by the state. 

For over 60 years, Oregon has waited for people to come looking for the holdings they've lost track of through the Unclaimed Property Program. You can draw your own conclusions about that program's success, given that the state now holds a $1 billion cache of lost funds. The new initiative identifies who owns the money and proactively sends checks, which range from a nice-to-have $50 to a windfall of $10,000.

“Treasurer [Tobias] Read challenged our team to get out as much money as possible to Oregonians,” says Kasey Krifka, marketing and communications director for the Oregon Treasury Savings Network. Oregon returned more than $7 million to nearly 20,000 people around the country in 2023, the program’s third year and its second year headed by the treasury.

Your odds of discovering monies you didn't know you lost are high. One in seven Americans has abandoned funds out there, according to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators. The $1 billion sitting in Oregon's registry never goes away: Krifka says the system has claimable funds from as far back as 1967. Pro tip: search for relatives too. Heirs and trustees are eligible claimants.

This month’s batch of returned funds is limited to property reported to the state from 2021 to 2022, but a simple search tool can show whether you’re owed money, where it comes from, and if it’s more than $100. The site doesn’t get much more specific than that, so you’ll have to file a claim to see if you’ve struck gold.