Legal Stealing and The Shame of Losing Money

I was never warned about the rule that took my money, but I chided myself for not knowing better anyway.

During my last few months in Shanghai, in spring of 2022, I was in the midst of what turned out to be a 61 day house arrest during “Zero Covid” with a newborn and a three year old. I got a message that someone on Long Island was looking for me regarding some money I left in the State of New York. I’ll call her Cindi.

Cindi sent a message to my uncle who sent a message to me that said I had money in the Office of the Comptroller’s and that she could help me get it back. She left her phone number. 

Definitely a scam I thought. I but I made a note that if I ever got out of this house arrest I would humor her and call her. I mean, I had lost my freedom, what the hell was there else to lose?

I got out in July and flew to the US where I had an extremely tense and stressful reunion with my family (mostly because of my stepmom). I called Cindi. She had a thick long island accent and told me that what she did was check the database for funds, then try to find people who they belonged to, and charged a fee for doing the paperwork to get the money back. But honey, she told me, you can do the paperwork yourself if you want, I’m just telling you. 

I went online to the website of the State Comptroller.

I had lived in New York a decade ago, from 2005 to 2011. Maybe I left a bank account unclosed or something? That seemed unlikely as I was very short on cash when I left Brooklyn for Detroit and would have needed every dollar I had just for gas and food. I had completed a two year MFA program but had decided to go into the far less academic and barely profitable career of blogging, which at the time had no benefits such as healthcare. (My workaround at the time was dating a doctor who wrote my prescriptions to himself and filled them on his insurance. I’m not what you would call a stickler for the “rules.” But also screw the insurance companies anyway.) 

I did, however, have some investment accounts that were set up before I went to college in Virginia. Most had been used for college, but there had been one, set up by a wealthy friend of my dad’s, that was still active (I went to a state school in the waning years of state schools being state funded). It was an Eaton Vance account and it had my dad’s name on it as a custodian; I had been under 18 when the account was opened. I had never paid attention to it since I hadn’t opened it in the first place. I believe the statements were going to my dad’s house but I have no idea. For all I know they went into a black hole. I wasn’t in the least concerned that the account was not secure.

It was now 2022 and at the mention of Eaton Vance I realized that I had forgotten that I had forgotten this fund. I had been coached by my dad that one of the secrets of long term investing was not to pay too much attention to market fluctuations. You could say I was taking that extremely literally. I had not looked at a statement in over a decade. But also felt dumb for losing track of things.

What I pieced together by talking to Cindi and Unclaimed Funds was that in 2014, unbeknownst to me, New York state forced Eaton Vance to close the account and took my money.  The reason I was given was because I had not left an official forwarding address. 

Unclaimed Fund’s website has a banner page that says:

Returned in 2024: $63,042,064

That sounds impressive, but in order to return people’s money you also have to TAKE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.  I took issue with my account being closed with no effort to contact me. This was going to make my money harder to get back than just leaving it with Eaton Vance, where it had been safe. Why was this the state’s role in the first place? It felt like a strange application of a law written more for dead people without wills.

When I left New York for Michigan in 2011 I had assumed that if someone needed to get in touch with me they would use the email address or phone number that never changed. Worst case, find me on instagram or facebook or twitter. In any other medium than US postal mail I was easy to find. (Still am).

No one tried to contact me there from the state or Eaton Vance. Cindi was the first person that told me, eight years later; she turned out to be the truth teller.

I contacted Eaton Vance to get the final statement from the account that was closed so that I could forward that one to Unclaimed Funds. The sent me an encrypted PDF which I opened to reveal the last known balance of that account. 

It had been $52,000

What the fuck. What the Actual Fuck. At this time I was no longer mad at the state. I was mad at myself. What the fuck was wrong with me that I “lost” this much money and didn’t notice? But I was also floored. Bring the weird windfall.

I sent the requested documents (my ID, my Eaton Vance Statement, address verification) to the secure portal on Unclaimed Funds website and was told it would take a few months to get back to me. 

*****

In the meantime I moved to Singapore. I got depressed, and then more depressed. I hated it there and had no friends at first. I missed our ayi and I hated not being in Shanghai and then learned through my stepmom that my dad didn’t want a relationship with me. (Her words, not his, he has dementia). It was a dark time, ironically on a sunny tropical island. 

As I was feeling worse and worse about my life, a check arrived. My sister forwarded it from the States. Finally, I thought, something good. I eagerly ripped into it. 

The state of New York returned about $7,000. That’s it. They said my case was closed. 

I don’t want to diminish the impact of a $7K windfall. That’s more than some people will ever have in their bank accounts at once. And if that had been the entirely of the account, then that would have been a satisfying conclusion. 

But what the fuck. Where was the other $45,000? What happened to it? 

And what was I supposed to do? I was beyond frustrated but I did not have the bandwidth to deal with this from Singapore. I turned my attention to another fight for what I was owed. 

I choose instead to battle Delta Airlines.  

****

In February of 2022 I had booked round trip tickets from Shanghai to Detroit, leaving in July and returning in August. The lockdown started in April of that year, and altered all of our life plans, to say the least. We took the July leg of the flight then canceled the return, as we were meant to move to Singapore from there without returning to Shanghai. It was a painful time because I desperately did not want to move, but China was still doing an extremely strict quarantine and separating COVID positive patients to government quarantine, which was hard to get out of. (See ACT TWO of this This American Life)

After we canceled the return flight Delta placed an e-credit voucher in my skymiles account, but when I went to use it said “no value, contact Delta for more information.”

I had to speak to at least six Delta employees. One assured me the credits had no value. One assured me this was perplexing but fixable and transferred me to a supervisor because he had never seen this before. The next one assured me he would figure this out but after several hours had to escalate me to a different supervisor. 

Then they were experiencing a very high call volume and suggested I call back another time. 

I started again the next day, and another person assured me again the return was useless as you can’t book a round trip, use half, and expect to get anything back.I have conflicting information I said. He was very confident. I opted not to ask him to transfer me and decided to call back again a different day but I was starting to have doubts. The mystery e-credits seemed variable on the whims and lopsided training of customer service employees.

BUT ALSO I had canceled the flight in enough time to give Delta weeks to resell that flight at a higher price to someone else. I had helped them make MORE money. I was not running a charity to enhance airline profits. They owed me. 

So I contacted them again and I got someone who told me very confidently my e-credits were worth about $3,000 USD and expired at the end of the year. I was floored. 

I got it in writing and ultimately ended up with a round trip flight to New York City for me and my son, still a lap infant at the time, on Delta One. Finally something that did not suck. 

There is a great disparity between holding someone worth nothing and something worth $3K. Every employee I spoke to told me something different, until someone with enough authority finally saw the whole case. A tiny bit of my confidence in being able to work through a mysterious customer service fiasco returned.

I flew to New York last April and stayed ten days.

Once I had a US phone number working again I picked up where I left off with Unclaimed Funds. I called Cindi again. I told her I found a chunk but that a lot was still missing. She suggested I check all the states I lived in so I looked on Virginia and Michigan unclaimed funds as well. Then she suggested I try under my dad’s name. 

This suggestion panicked me. What if the money had been sent to my dad instead? His name was on the account as a custodian. What rights did that give him after I was 25? Did he get a check and not tell me? Did my stepmom open a check and cash it for him? I was worried that they knew exactly what happened and were keeping the money to try and punish me. This was a wildly paranoid ideas, but my stepmom is still keeping me out of a relationship with my elderly dad to punish me, so it is also in character.

I wanted to tell my dad about my problem but I wasn’t allowed to speak to him. I was sure that if I told my stepmom that she would laugh, or worse, make a point that this was my karma for not treating her the way she had demanded to be treated. I felt ashamed to try and explain to Cindi, a stranger, that my own family would be no help. I did sit down and run my dad’s name through the Virginia Unclaimed Funds search function as well as my own. Several months later they said that money was not under my social security number. I don’t know my dad’s social security number.

The guilt and shame I carry from being estranged from my family makes it hard for me to make my own case. I cannot ask them for help, and they may know something that could make this easier. The feeling that they don’t want me to be helped, that they might prefer to see things get worse for me, is awful. I don’t know if that’s what they think, but that’s what I imagine when I think of reaching out to them.

I went back to Eaton Vance and asked if it was possible they still had the missing money and they said definitely not, the account balance had all been sent out. But where? They could not give me more details from 2014. I debated if there was a way I could ask for an audit or FOIA them. But I wasn’t even a client anymore. 

I went back to Singapore feeling very stuck on this. I tried to forget it but I was too pissed off. At myself, at Unclaimed Funds, at not having an ally that would know what to do. I could not figure out a course of action. Things stayed like this for a year.

Then another lady lost $50K and a viral article came out. She fell for a scam and felt terrible and I related to all of her money shame. I saw a little bit of my story in hers, and I saw the value of putting the story out there. If nothing else, I see no other way to get rid of all the shame that is trapped in keeping it a secret. I am an idiot, but it shouldn’t have cost me this much.

And if you will allow me a brief moment of public service: EVERYONE CHECK UNCLAIMED FUNDS IN EVERY STATE YOU EVER LIVED IN. There were so, so many names and cases in there when I did my own search. I want you to get that $50 that Sprint Mobile owes you! 

But back in the interest of me. I can’t quite let this go but I need help. If anyone has ever fought Unclaimed Funds and won, how? If there is a way to assert more rights to information from Eaton Vance, how? Do I need a lawyer or a detective? Did Unclaimed Funds apply the law properly when they closed my account without consent? If I just knew where it went, I feel like I could wrestle with the powers that be. But right now the money is just missing. Unclaimed Funds doesn’t deserve it, I do.

If you do have information leading to a resolution in this unsolved, yet legal, money crime I am willing to discuss a reward. Please DO reach out. My email address is shockingly easy to find. I would suggest NOT sending a letter. I will be endlessly grateful.

(Does anyone need help with Delta e credits? TBH that WAS satisfying. I’m available).