Was the temptation too much?
Imagine day in and day out you see listings of people that are owed thousands of dollars and they are not even aware of it. You know the rightful owner of some of this money may never be found – what do you do? Will this temptation lead you down the wrong path? It may have for a Cook County, Illinois treasurer’s office employee.
Jonathan Martin, a Cook County treasurer’s office employee used his position and access to data in an elaborate scheme involving property tax refunds owed to taxpayers, prosecutors alleged. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted of official misconduct.
Martin is accused of improperly using office computers to download tax information and send it to his home e-mail for personal use.
Here is the alleged scheme – Martin and a friend set up a dummy company to obtain unclaimed refunds. This is money that thousands of taxpayers who were owed, a collective $8 million but didn’t know it.
Martin has insisted that he never followed through with his plan and the plan was devised to expose other employees running real scams with taxpayer refunds.
Unclaimed property is property or assets turned over to the treasurer after five years of going unclaimed. Then the treasurer makes attempts to return the unclaimed property to taxpayers. Martin having access to the database is said to have downloaded this data before others in the office could access it.
Martin insists that he was trying to help the taxpayers. He wanted to call those people owed refunds, to get the ball rolling so they could apply for their money and stop others from accessing it.
No money was ever missing and Martin was not charged with theft. What prosecutors are accusing him of is downloading tax information for personal use.
Instead of putting the temptation there for others, please do your own web search for unclaimed property. You may be pleasantly surprised to find you have money sitting there for you to claim. CashUnclaimed.com has the largest database which includes state and federal listings. One search could make you richer, so don’t delay.
