New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office has been sitting on roughly $10 billion in unclaimed funds, and a program launched in January 2025 now sends checks directly to verified owners of small accounts without requiring them to file a claim. Through April 2026, the Expedited Payment Program had issued more than 210,000 checks totaling $48 million, with an average payment of $229. The shift marks the first time the state has proactively returned abandoned property at scale, and a recent increase in the payment cap could accelerate the drawdown significantly.
Why $10 billion in dormant accounts is shrinking faster than expected
For years, forgotten bank balances, uncashed insurance payouts, and abandoned utility deposits piled up in New York’s custody while their rightful owners had no idea the money existed. The traditional process required individuals to search a state database, file paperwork, and wait for verification. That bottleneck kept billions locked in state accounts even when ownership was straightforward to confirm.
A law signed in late 2024, introduced at the request of the State Comptroller through Assembly Bill A10219 and its Senate companion, amended Abandoned Property Law Section 1407 to create an expedited payment track. According to the comptroller’s office, the program allows the state to return abandoned property of $250 or less without requiring a formal claim, as long as ownership can be validated through existing records. The Office of Unclaimed Funds began mailing checks for newly reported accounts at that threshold in January 2025 after DiNapoli highlighted that the new statute would let his office move money back to residents more quickly.
The practical result: residents who never knew they were owed money started receiving checks in the mail. The comptroller’s county-level dashboard shows that the largest concentrations of unclaimed accounts sit in New York City boroughs, which suggests those areas stand to benefit most as automatic mailings continue. Counties with the highest density of sub-$250 accounts should, in theory, see the fastest reduction in unclaimed balances. Future updates to the map, compared against 2025 baseline data, would offer the clearest test of whether the program is reaching the people it was designed to help.
$48 million returned and a twentyfold cap increase
The program’s early returns are concrete. According to the comptroller’s April 2026 release, the state issued over 210,000 expedited checks totaling $48 million in the program’s first 15 months. The average check came to $229, just under the original $250 ceiling…