Before you engage us

Yes. Escheatment transfers custody, not ownership. The state holds the property — or, where it has been liquidated, the proceeds — in the owner's name until a valid claim is made. In most states there is no deadline to claim, though the asset may have been converted to dollars in the meantime.

Yes, always — every US state runs a free public unclaimed-property search, and no state charges owners to claim. Where we earn our fee is the harder ground: records indexed under old addresses or transliterated names, property split across several states, exchanges that reported through a parent entity, and evidence packages a state will actually accept first time. If your case is simple, we will tell you so and point you to the state's own site.

Then your claim is to the proceeds. Some states (New York among them) liquidate virtual currency on receipt and hold the dollar value; others hold the asset itself. The right to claim survives the sale — but any later appreciation of the coin is generally lost, which is why acting early matters.

No, but it changes the evidence the state will want. A marriage certificate, deed poll, or the former passport itself usually bridges the gap. This is one of the most common situations we handle for international claimants, and part of step II of our method is telling you exactly which documents the particular state will accept.

Genuine escheatment notices do exist — the Coinbase and Kraken matters both began with them — but so do imitations designed to harvest identity documents or seed phrases. We will never ask for a seed phrase, private key, or password, never ask you to send crypto anywhere, and never take payment before a state has paid you. If in doubt about any message, verify against the state's official unclaimed-property site before responding to anyone, including us.

Because so many of the owners are outside America. When US exchanges closed accounts they could no longer serve — often for regulatory reasons — the customers affected were disproportionately international, while the property landed with US states. We sit where many of the owners are, and work the American side of the trail on their behalf.