A woman got a text asking if she wanted to donate money being held by the state’s unclaimed property division. She thought it was spam, until she realized nearly $92,000 was missing. Getting the money back turned out be another issue, so that’s when she called Help Me Howard with Brandon Beyer.
Working in real estate Whitney Carr knows how important financial details are, which makes what happened to her even more frustrating.
Whitney Carr: “I was like ‘No this isn’t real. There’s no way that this happened.'”
When Whitney was just a child, her grandfather opened an account for her and bought a hundred shares of Pfizer. Something he did for all of his grandchildren.
Brandon Beyer: “He did this to help with education and college?”
Whitney Carr: “He believed that it was very important that we went on to further education, and that all of his grandchildren went to college.”
Over the years it grew to nearly 4,000 shares.
Whitney Carr: “The way my grandfather set it up, it’s a dividend reinvestment plan. So every time it would make money it would buy more shares of itself.”
Since her parents had saved, Whitney didn’t need the money for college.
Whitney Carr: “So we just kept it growing, and my parents were like ‘Just let it go, don’t touch it, just leave it there.'”
And she did. For 34 years.
“In some years we would receive 400 shares. Sometimes we would receive 40 shares. It would just continue to keep buying it.”
And then last year, she received a strange text.
Whitney Carr: “That stated ‘Would you like to give your unclaimed property to Florida’s prison system?'”
She thought it was spam.
Whitney Carr: “We were like ‘What? What is that?'”
But just in case – she did a search.
Whitney Carr: “I put my mom’s name in and up comes ‘Pfizer dividend reinvestment $91,900’…I was like ‘You have to be kidding me.'”
The company holding her stock had sold it and sent the money to Florida’s unclaimed property, telling Whitney her account had been inactive.
Whitney Carr: “If there was nothing going on, why were you sending me statements of shares that had been purchased in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024?”
And now she had another problem. She couldn’t get her money out of unclaimed property.
Whitney Carr: “$91,000 is a lot of money.”
And that’s when she called us.
Whitney Carr: “I was desperate. We’re desperate. My family is.”
Howard, she was getting yearly statements – is that enough to keep your account active?
Howard Finkelstein: “No, it is not. In order to prevent you account from being declared dormant after a five year period, you need to have some sort of contact with the company holding your money. It can be cashing a dividend check, voting in a shareholder meeting or simply logging into your account online.”
We emailed Whitney’s bank and they told us: “before transferring unclaimed assets to a state …” They “…mail(s) Shareholder notices to the address on record.”
Whitney Carr: “We had never received any notification.”
Then we emailed Florida’s unclaimed property. And though we didn’t hear back, two weeks later Whitney’s claim was approved. She got her check.
Whitney Carr: “I appreciate it. You guys made all the right calls and put some pressure where pressure needed to be because unfortunately I just wasn’t able to get it done myself so thank you.”
Florida, like every state, has an unclaimed property fund which is made up of money from banks or utilities you may have forgotten about. The state doesn’t come looking for you though, you have to check the website to see if you have money there.
For more information on the website, click here.
Hey, got a problem? Need a hand? Here’s how to find us below. It’s Help Me Howard. I’m Brandon Beyer, 7News.
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