CA State Controller working to reverse the violation of his own policy.
Steve Westly, CA State Controller, has a strict policy against the selling of hate materials. It was his office however that had auctioned such materials on an online auction.
Specifically, a batch of Adolf Hitler stamps that sold for $85 in April and a Nazi cross that sold for $80 in November.
A copy of “Mein Kampf” was recently pulled from the state’s Web site after a Sacramento TV station called attention to the Hitler manifesto.
The items are among the warehouses of valuables, which have gone unclaimed by their owners for more than three years, turned over to the state from safe deposit boxes.
What makes this especially interesting is that Westly himself was an eBay auction executive in 2000 when the online site—heeding the call to ban hate material—stopped accepting Nazi and Ku Klux Klan memorabilia.
“The controller has a strict policy against the selling of hate materials,’’ office spokesman Yusef K. Robb said. “He regrets that his policy hasn’t been consistently applied.’’
Robb said the controller is working with everyone involved—from his staff to the independent auctioneer and appraisers—to ensure the anti-hate policy “is followed without exception.’’
There are other states that also go online to sell the unclaimed property. Every state has its own set of unclaimed property laws, its own database of unclaimed money and its own system for holding and claiming funds. Cash Unclaimed Money Search has pulled all this information into one large searchable database where you can search for and claim your unclaimed property.
More recently, Westly was in San Diego searching for owners of their portion of the over $4.8 billion of unclaimed property the state is holding. He has visited other sites in the state returning money to the rightful owner.
The numbers are striking. In San Diego alone, there are 217,000 people to whom the state owes more than $61 million.
By law, when a bank account or safe deposit box is not accessed for more than three years and the bank can’t find the owner, the account balance or box content is turned over to the state. Unclaimed wages and salaries are turned over to the state one year after the last contact with the owner.
The state holds the property until it is claimed. Much of it is never claimed, and the program has become a significant source of revenue for the state, totaling more than $800 million in annual revenue in recent years.
Unclaimed property ranges from stocks and bonds to uncashed checks, paychecks never picked up, overpaid utility bills and insurance premiums, and the contents of safe-deposit boxes.
So it is easy to see how some of the hate materials did slip by and be put on the auction block.
