There are many reasons you might have unclaimed funds (abandoned accounts, uncashed checks, misspelled names, incorrect addresses, etc), and your state is required to hold your property until you claim it.
They will not seek you out, and most people are completely unaware they may have lost funds or property being held by the state.
Every state has a website where you can check whether you have unclaimed property and submit a claim. Just search ‘[my state] unclaimed property’.
Usually this can happen when you are owed money by an institution (bank, insurance, stocks, etc) and you either dont claim it, dont get the check, forget about it, or it happens outside of your knowledge (e.g. grandparents set up an account). In the US, you can usually check with your state’s Comptroller’s office. For example, NY has unclaimed funds under the office of the New York state comptroller
I’d reccomend going directly to the state .gov website and looking there or making sure you have the state website if following a link. They will let you search by name for unclaimed accounts, and then after choosing the one you want to claim, it will ask for ssn, dob and name, etc. If they can verify that information, you get a check in the mail. Ive gotten a few hundred from old insurance that probably settled some account after I’d switched.
Yeah, make sure it’s .gov. Don’t go through a middle man that does the same thing while charging a fee.