Found $685.53 Using Google

Here’s my story.

I was checking to see if Google had indexed my wife’s corner of my web site (by typing Marianne Lannigan into Google). Her site didn’t show up, but there was another site with a “Marianne E. Lannigan” and a “Patrick M. Lannigan” next to it (our full names). “Too strange” I thought to myself. I clicked on the site. It was the Massachusetts Department of Revenue of unclaimed taxes page. My mind started rewinding to a few years ago, in a particularly complex tax year when I had to file taxes in the U.S. and Canada. Thousands of dollars went this way and that, literally. Mutual funds, RRSP’s, stock options, U.S. accounts, Canadian accounts, etc.. On top of that, we were moving. It was a confusing time. I did suspect, at the time, that there was this one check that we never did get from the state of Massachusetts, but when I called them they said it went out – so I figured I must have cashed it at the time we were moving all of our accounts around. I (obviously) hadn’t!

The next day my wife and I phoned the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, and after they drilled us to verify our identities they told us that yes, indeed, a check had been returned to them for some unknown reason (probably wrong address).