Unclaimed funds list includes inmates

Some money is from commissary accounts at Greene County jail.

More than $15,000 is owed to hundreds of people who were inmates at the Greene County Jail in 2016, but that’s a small portion of all the unclaimed funds that are handled by the county’s auditor’s office.

The sheriff ’s office has posted a list of people who have funds waiting for them from their inmate commissary accounts.

The amounts range from 25 cents to $842, and the sheriff ’s office release shows 35 pages of names of people — more than 1,500 — who can claim those funds, which total $15,663.27.

State law requires local governments to retain unclaimed funds in a separate account for five years, then it gets put into the general fund and can be used, in this case, to help cover the county’s operating expenses, said Greene County Auditor David Graham.

Even after the five-year period, people may still be able to legally claim the funds, but it may be more difficult to prove it’s their money, Graham said.

The current balance on the county’s unclaimed funds account is about $306,300. Graham said that total represents a variety of many small transactions, from unclaimed court settlements to uncashed jury duty checks.

Maj. Kirk Keller, the jail administrator, said the jail’s unclaimed total is higher than normal because new software that was installed was not properly linking the commissary accounts. Keller said the third-party vendor that administers the accounts, the Keefe Group, will be installing an update to the system to prevent that from happening again.

“The money was just sitting there and nobody knew it was there,” Keller said.

On average, about 5,000 people are housed at the Greene County Jail in a year’s time. When people are booked into jail, the money they have on them will be deposited into their commissary account and family members can make deposits.

“Often when someone is released, they won’t come back to get what’s in their account,” Keller said.

The unclaimed funds list was posted on the sheriff ’s website last week and it will remain available to the public until Feb. 5.

If funds are not claimed by Feb. 5, the monies get deposited into the unclaimed funds account at the Greene County Auditor’s Office.

Graham said he is working to publish the list of all the county’s unclaimed funds on the county’s website.

Those who want to make a claim on the jail’s unclaimed funds list prior to Feb. 5, should contact Deputy Sandy Smith at 937562-5842.