BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Need some help paying for Christmas gifts? You might want to search the state's unclaimed property database, which contains $635 million in unclaimed money owed to people around Louisiana.
Old savings and checking accounts, payroll checks, stocks and dividends, insurance proceeds, oil and gas royalty payments and other items are sent to the state when a business cannot locate someone.
Treasurer John Kennedy has been trying to give the money back, printing advertisements in newspapers and traveling to malls to tell people about the database. He's even slapped the website address on the side of a truck in the Natchitoches Christmas parade.
Kennedy's urging people to check out website over the holiday season. He said Friday more than 500,000 people are owed money.