Property going unclaimed in Nevada

Wednesday, March 22, 2000 | 11:48 a.m.

The effort follows another update of the division's list of Nevada residents believed to have unclaimed personal items or cash. Those updates occur twice a year.

Division administrator Steven McDonald says the state began in 1979 to recover unclaimed property such as jewelry, rare coins, stamp collections, cash, stocks, bonds and other items and try to return it to owners.

In addition to collecting items left in bank accounts and safe deposit boxes, the agency deals with items left in casino vaults. It's also responsible for returning deposits for utility services to customers once companies are unable to locate them.

The agency collects items from banks after an account remains inactive for more than five years and the customer can't be located by the bank.

In cases involving casinos, the agency collects unclaimed paychecks or valuables left in vaults for more than a year. That same time frame applies to utility service deposits.

The agency holds any property in a safe deposit box for one year. The items then are auctioned and the proceeds go into an account set up in the owner's name. The owner can come forward at any time to collect the cash.

Since 1979, the state has collected more than $90 million worth of property and returned about a third of that.

One safe deposit box had rare coins inside that sold at auction for $30,000. At the other end of the spectrum, a 5-cent bid was good enough to get another safe deposit box that held a set of teeth, a hearing aid and eye glasses.