More than 2 in 5 north Dutchess residents have unclaimed funds

The New York Office of the Comptroller currently holds about $70 million in “unclaimed funds” belonging to Dutchess County residents.

Unclaimed funds are a collection of money that has “been lost or forgotten over time, including old bank accounts, uncashed checks, stock certificates, and unused gift cards,” according to the Office of the State Comptroller’s website.

Reporting from the nonprofit newsroom New York Focus in June revealed the comptroller has over $20 billion in total unclaimed funds, the largest collection of lost property in the nation.

The Millerton News obtained the current list of unclaimed fund accounts that included names and addresses of over 8,000 residents of northeast Dutchess County. That’s a little over two in every five people in the region.

All numbers and figures derived from this list are only estimates due to inconsistencies in the addresses kept in records.

Millbrook addresses comprised the largest portion of account owners, numbering over 3,000.

Millerton addresses are associated with 1,500 account owners and Amenia addresses with 1,200.

Stanford and Pine Plains also logged about 1,100 accounts each.

For northeast Dutchess County account owners, 10% of the money owed comes from uncashed New York State-issued checks.

Each record in the list includes a name for the account holder and the unique account number, a recorded reporter for the lost funds, a description of the lost funds and the year the funds were reported. The complete list of funds held by the state comptroller contains over 12 million records from 1985 to 2025.

The state comptroller does not publicly release the amount of money held in each account. Amounts could range from as little as a single cent to hundreds of dollars.

The comptroller’s website allows for a search of the list to initiate the claiming process.

Names of individuals, businesses and government organizations are varied on the list. The Village of Millerton has eight account numbers with outstanding unclaimed property from outstanding checks to vendors, New York State uncashed checks and other reported unclaimed property types.

According to the list, the Town of North East has an outstanding unclaimed property account dating back to 1997. The funds were reported by Pitney Bowes Inc. and recorded as relating to outstanding checks issued to vendors.

The village and town clerks expressed surprise at the reported unclaimed funds when the News stopped by their offices on Monday, Aug. 25, but vowed to start filing claims.