Need to top off your deposit for your Kelowna home purchase?

This is a long shot to top off that deposit for your Kelowna home purchase but you never know! A few years back a friend brought to my attention that I had $1,300 in an unclaimed Whitehorse, Yukon bank account. Upon reading the article below go to the following website to see you have have an unclaimed bank account:

www.vancouversun.com/unclaimedbalances/


"MILLIONS LEFT IN UNCLAIMED BANK ACCOUNTS ACROSS CANADA

If you or a rich relative left money in an old account, you can get it back -and it could be worth a small fortune

Twenty five years ago, Gerhard Varson walked into a downtown Royal Bank, where he kept his sizable fortune.

What Varson did that cold, rainy day isn't known. Maybe he deposited a cheque, maybe he took out some money for groceries.

What is clear is that Nov. 13, 1984 was the last date there was any activity on Varson's account.

Dormant accounts aren't unusual, of course -- people often leave a few dollars in an old bank account and forget about it.

But Varson's account does stand out for one reason.

Its balance: $423,598.59. Indeed, of the 1.1 million dormant bank accounts that have been transferred to the Bank of Canada over the years, Varson's is the largest in the whole country.

But it's far from the only chunk of unclaimed cash.

In B.C. alone, there are nearly 60,000 unclaimed bank accounts containing a combined total of $48 million.

More than half of those accounts contain $200 or less.

But there are many that, while not as big as Varson's, still contain a small windfall, including 153 accounts worth $25,000 or more.

By law, the owners of unclaimed accounts -- or their heirs -- can ask the Bank of Canada for their money back.

So how do you find out if you have some money owing to you?

Go to vancouversun.com/unclaimedbalances/andyou can search a database of all 60,000 unclaimed B.C. accounts. If you think your money might be in another province, you'll also find a link there to the central bank's complete database.

Under Canadian banking rules, chartered banks are required to turn over the contents of dormant accounts to the Bank of Canada after 10 years of inactivity.

Balances of more than $1,000 remain on the central bank's books for 100 years. Those less than $1,000 are kept for 40 years after the last transaction, then revert to government coffers.

Today, the bank controls $395 million in dormant accounts from across Canada, waiting for their rightful owners or heirs to come forward and claim them.

However, most remain silent, year after year. Of the 1.1 million accounts on the bank's books, only about 8,000 are paid out each year.

The list of balances shows that, this year, only about $76,000 will revert to the government, likely not even enough to cover the cost of keeping the books.

The Ottawa Citizen recently obtained a database from the central bank of all dormant accounts and shared the information on the B.C.-based accounts with The Sun.

The oldest B.C. account on the list is registered to a W. Cuthbert, who left $1,116.87 at a Bank of Montreal in Victoria on Oct. 2, 1905.

The last known address for many of the account holders is unknown.

But where it was recorded, the most common city of residence is Vancouver ($10.1 million), followed by Richmond ($1.7 million) and Burnaby ($1.5 million).

There's also been considerable sums left in B.C. banks by those offshore, especially from Asia.

Those sums include the third-highest unclaimed bank balance in the province, $188,549.70, left by Tokyo's Akira Sakata in a BMO branch in Burnaby. Last transaction: May 29, 1995

Source: Chad Skeleton/Vancouver Sun"


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