Abstract:
The methods of the invention include interrogating a user provided “Abandoned Property DataBase” (APDB) and assigning a probable escheat jurisdiction to each account based on a series of user-selected processing options. The invention appends confidence codes indicating how each escheat decision was reached, enabling users to make informed decisions as to which accounts require additional manual review and ultimately, which escheat to each jurisdiction. The invention can also correct addresses, parse extraneous data, append alternate escheat jurisdictions, provide Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) compliance validation, and allow real-time review and updating of account data and escheat determinations. The invention will increase the likelihood of lost assets being reunited with their rightful owners and/or turned over to the proper jurisdiction.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
       [0001]     1. Field of the Invention The invention relates to methods for increasing the likelihood of locating property owners and identifying the U.S. state, Canadian Province, or foreign jurisdiction of the property owner&#39;s last known address.  
         [0002]     2. Brief Description of the Prior Art  
         [0003]     Every U.S. state &amp; select foreign countries have unclaimed property laws which declare property (including bank accounts and other financial accounts) to be abandoned after a period of inactivity typically in the three to five year range. During this abandonment period landlords, banks, utilities, hospitals, brokerage firms, mutual funds, insurance companies, and other organizations are required to use due diligence to attempt to locate the property owner. If the property owner cannot be located, then ownership of the property is transferred to the state or province&#39;s abandoned-property division or unclaimed property office, which in the context of this scenario is known as “escheat”.  
         [0004]     According to decisions of the United States Supreme Court, if the rightful owner cannot be located, the abandoned property must be returned to the state of the property owner&#39;s last known address. The business in custody of the property has an obligation to make a reasonable effort to identify the correct state of escheatment. Once all reasonable attempts are exhausted, if the address still cannot be identified, the property is returned to the state of incorporation of the business holding the property.  
         [0005]     Surprisingly, satisfying reasonable due diligence requirements by identifying the appropriate escheat jurisdiction can be very difficult. A typical escheat process often requires extensive and redundant manual review of individual accounts by multiple parties, including, but not limited, to the organization holding the funds, their transfer agent, the unclaimed property clearinghouse and the individual state or provinces&#39; unclaimed property departments, as well as a variety of attorneys, oversight committees, and vendors functioning in a subcontractor capacity. This process is made more difficult by jurisdiction filing deadlines which often do not allow for adequate time for the manual review process. This reduces the accuracy of the escheat and causes an unnecessarily large percentage of abandoned property to escheat to the state of incorporation of the property holder in error.  
         [0006]     The escheat process can be especially challenging because of the age of many abandoned accounts and the poor condition of the account file. In the case of U.S. accounts, because many abandoned accounts were established so long ago, some actually pre-date the invention of zip codes. Additionally, many of the streets, towns and cities reflected in lapsed account owner files either no longer exist, or have had their physical boundaries redrawn. Even those accounts that were created more recently can cause problems as zip code changes occur to coincide with demographic trends, population growth and industry development. Confusion over the appropriate state abbreviation is also a problem. For example, it is not unusual for someone to incorrectly abbreviate Arizona as “AR”, rather than “AZ”. In actuality, “AR” is the abbreviation for Arkansas, which is often incorrectly abbreviated as “AK”, the correct abbreviation for Alaska, which, in turn, is often misidentified as “AL”, the correct abbreviation for Alabama. There is also routine confusion with abbreviations for all of the “M” states, and other states as well. These address errors render most data parsing tools ineffective. These challenges can often be even more difficult for foreign accounts, which have fewer addressing standards defined.  
         [0007]     In addition to identifying the proper escheat jurisdiction, it is also important to be able to provide support documentation substantiating each escheat recommendation. As individual jurisdictions continue to follow the trend of enacting new legislation aimed at tightening guidelines, fewer and fewer organizations will be capable of satisfying the increasingly complicated due-diligence requirements.  
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
       [0008]     It is therefore an object of the invention to provide automated methods for increasing the likelihood of locating property owners and, more specifically, identifying the U.S. state or appropriate foreign province or country of the property owner&#39;s last known address.  
         [0009]     It is also an object of the invention to provide methods for improving the accuracy of the escheat process and to provide detailed documentation supporting escheat recommendations.  
         [0010]     Accordingly, the methods of the invention include interrogating a user provided “Abandoned Property DataBase” (APDB) and assigning a probable escheat jurisdiction to each account based on a series of user-selected processing options. The invention appends confidence codes indicating how each escheat decision was reached, enabling users to make informed decisions as to which accounts require additional manual review and ultimately, which escheat to each state or foreign jurisdiction.  
         [0011]     The invention also provides the user with the additional ability to interrogate each account owner record to isolate name and address attributes and correct misspelled or otherwise “bad” addresses, parse extraneous data, identify lapsed/retired city names, append probable zip/postal codes to otherwise unidentifiable accounts, and/or append a detail of all possible alternative escheat jurisdictions along with their corresponding zip/postal code counts for each identifiable city name. The city/state and zip code assignments can be further refined to be based upon the USPS&#39; (P)referred Zip codes, (A)cceptable Alternative Zip codes, and/or recognized, but (N)on-Acceptable Alternatives from a delivery standpoint.  
         [0012]     The invention further incorporates an Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) compliance module that interrogates every character in each account owner record and scans for the presence of OFAC restricted foreign countries and/or terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, and those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.  
         [0013]     After a database is processed through the invention, the resulting output file can be posted to a secure DataBase Management System (DBMS), which can be accessed through the Internet. Authorized users can access individual accounts for the purpose of reviewing, approving, or editing escheat determinations and related account data fields, as client defined permission levels allow. While reviewing accounts within the DBMS, authorized users can access electronic listings of city names and Zip/Postal codes within each jurisdiction to assist them in their review. Reviewed or edited account owner records are electronically flagged within the DBMS to indicate the user that conducted the review, the status of the review, and the edited escheat jurisdiction.  
         [0014]     Detailed marketing and operational reports can be generated in real-time and, upon completion of each project, a comprehensive final output report package is generated along with individual reports for each jurisdiction, as an additional option.  
         [0015]     The invention significantly improves the speed and accuracy of escheat decisions, while dramatically reducing unclassified accounts defaulting to the state of incorporation of the property holder. Collectively, the processing options and reports according to the invention are designed to satisfy due diligence requirements of each jurisdiction. The methods of the invention are performed with the aid of a computer and can be provided locally on an individual desktop computer or remotely via the Internet. 
     
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0016]      FIGS. 1-13  are flow charts illustrating an embodiment of the invention. 
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION  
       [0017]     Turning now to  FIG. 1 , starting at  10  a decision is made at  12  whether to submit a job online or in person. If it is decided to submit online, the user enters name and password at  14  which are validated at  16 . If validation fails, an error message is displayed at  32  and the user is given another opportunity to login. If login is successful, the user uploads a data file and defines its layout at  18 . The upload is validated at  20 . If the upload failed, an error is displayed at  34  and the user is given the opportunity to upload again. If the upload is successful, the user selects services at  22 . The services are described in more detail with reference to  FIGS. 2-13 . The services are validated at  24  (e.g. determined whether the user has subscribed to the selected services). If a selected service is invalid, an error message is displayed at  36 . If the selected services are valid, the user has the opportunity to decide at  26  whether to order processing. If processing is ordered, tables are updated at  28  and at  30  the job entry is complete and proceeds to processing at  52  in  FIG. 2 . If processing is not selected at  26 , the program exits at  38 .  
         [0018]     If it was determined at  12  to submit the job in person, the client speaks with a service representative at  40 . An account is established or verified at  42 . Data input files are accepted and verified at  44  and services selected at  46 . The customer may decide at  48  to defer processing pending further instructions, exiting at  50 , or to proceed with processing, updating tables at  28  before exiting the job entry step at  30  and beginning the processing at  52  in  FIG. 2 .  
         [0019]     According to the illustrated embodiment, jobs can be run individually or in batches.  FIG. 2  illustrates the main program path for job processing. Starting at  52 , the jobs table is polled at  54 . If a job is found at  56 , the job specifications are retrieved at  58 , input and output files are opened at  60 , and the input data and specifications are validated at  62 . If the data and specifications are valid, it is sequentially determined which of four services have been selected: escheat processing at  64 , state finder at  66 , zip code finder at  68 , and manual review at  70 .  
         [0020]     If the data and/or specifications were determined to be invalid at  62 , the program proceeds to routine B at  74  which is described in more detail in  FIG. 9 .  
         [0021]     Turning briefly to  FIG. 9 , an error is logged at  500 , the jobs tables are updated with an error date at  502 , and the input and output files are closed at  504  before returning to the main program at  506 .  
         [0022]     Returning now to  FIG. 2 , if it is determined at  64  that the specifications call for escheat processing, a loop until end of file is begun at  76  and routine A is called at  78 . Routine A is illustrated in  FIG. 3 .  
         [0023]     Turning now to  FIG. 3 , each address is first standardized in format at  100  and then matched to the United States Postal Service (USPS) at  102  using the USPS Coding Accuracy and Support System (CASS) certified address verification software. This software, in addition to matching input addresses to database addresses will correct an input address, if possible, to make all of its elements consistent. For example, if the raw data included “75 Corporate Dr”, “Hauppauge”, “NM”, “1788”, then the system can change “NM” to “NY”, which is a valid state for the provided city name and zip code. However, the system is not able to make such a correction if there is not a valid street address and the city and zip code fields also contained inconsistencies.  
         [0024]     If it is determined at  104  that a successful match has been made and it is further determined at  106  that a second pass was not necessary, at  110  that the state code was not changed and at  114  that the city and/or zip code was not changed, a confidence code of  1 A is assigned to the address. This is the highest confidence level.  
         [0025]     If the state code was determined to be correct on the first pass and only the city and/or zip code needed to be corrected at  114 , the address is assigned the confidence code  1 B at  116 . If the state code needed to be corrected at  110 , the address is assigned a confidence code of  1 C at  112 .  
         [0026]     If other elements of the address need to be corrected as indicated by pass # 2  at  106  (after additional parsing at  120 ), the address is assigned confidence code  1 D.  
         [0027]     If a successful match was not made at  104  and additional parsing was not performed at  120 , then at  510  it is determined whether Canadian and/or other Foreign processing has been selected. If Canadian and/or other Foreign processing has been selected the system proceeds to routine N at  542  which is described in more detail in  FIG. 13 .  
         [0028]     Turning now briefly to  FIG. 13 , the account is matched to a series of one or more Canadian and/or other Foreign postal databases at  544  to see if all or part of the incoming address can be validated. The match is performed at  546  and if matched, then the appropriate escheat jurisdiction is assigned at  548  along with a confidence code of  7 A at which point the program turns to routine D at  156 . If no match was found at  546 , then the program returns to the main program at P  550  ( FIG. 3 ).  
         [0029]     If Canadian/Foreign processing has not been selected at  510 , or has been returned to P 550  following a non-match, it is determined at  122  whether the city, state and zip code all matched exactly without changing the state code at  124  or the city and/or zip code at  128 . If these three address elements were a perfect match, then the address is assigned confidence code  2 A at  132 . If the city and/or zip code was changed at  128 , the address is assigned confidence code  2 B at  130 . If the state needed to be corrected at  124 , the address is assigned confidence code  2 C at  126 .  
         [0030]     If the software was unable to make a three element (city, state, zip code) match, but was able to match state and zip code as determined at  134 , the address is assigned confidence level  2 D at  136 .  
         [0031]     If the software was unable to make a two element (,state, zip code) match, but was able to match city and state as determined at  138 , and if it is determined at  140  that the city name is unique to the state, the address is assigned confidence code  2 E at  142 . If the city name is not unique to the state, a zip code weighting is performed. In order to assign an escheat state, the state must contain a percentage of the total zip codes in the country that exceeds a user-assigned threshold.  
         [0032]     For example, according to the USPS, the city of Denver can be found in 94 zip codes across 11 different states, but Colorado contains 84 of those zip codes, which is just over 89% of the total Denver zip codes in the country. Therefore, if the user assigns a threshold of 89% or less, then the account will be coded for escheatment to Colorado if the account owner&#39;s city name is Denver and their state is CO. This process is performed at  144  and the confidence code  2 F is assigned to the address. If the state zip code count is below the threshold as determined at  144 , it is compared to a lower threshold (e.g. 30 to 49%) at  148 . If it is not below that threshold, confidence code  2 G is assigned at  152 . If it is below that threshold, confidence code  2 H is assigned at  150 .  
         [0033]     If the match at  138  fails, the program turns to subroutine E at  154 . This subroutine is illustrated in  FIG. 4 . If it is determined at  200  that the address does not include a state (which from prior processing does not match the city), all states containing the city are found at  202 . If one or more states are found for the city as determined at  204 , and it is determined at  206  that only one state was found, the found state is indicated as the escheat state and confidence code  3 A is assigned at  208 .  
         [0034]     If it is determined at  206  that more than one state matches the city; it is determined at  210  whether one state has more zip codes for the city than any other state. If there is one state that has more zip codes than the others, that state is indicated as the escheat state at  212 . The number of zip codes is compared to the previously defined high threshold at  214 . If the threshold is exceeded, confidence code  3 B is assigned at  216 . If the high threshold is not exceeded, the low threshold is tested at  218 . If the number of zip codes is not below the low threshold, confidence code  3 C is assigned at  222 . If it is, confidence code  3 D is assigned at  220 . Following processing in this subroutine, the program turns to subroutine D at  156 . It is important to note that these are all preliminary escheat assignments and that the user&#39;s original processing instructions at  22  will determine if the assigned escheat state is accepted or rejected and replaced with the appropriate default state (or province) of the holder&#39;s incorporation.  
         [0035]     Subroutine D is illustrated in  FIG. 5 . Starting at  300 , it is determined whether the account is to be processed according to the U.S. Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) guidelines. If it is, the address is compared to an OFAC table at  302 . If there is a match as determined at  304 , the account is flagged for manual review at  306 . By selecting OFAC verification, each client-provided address line is programmatically scanned for the presence of the OFAC restricted foreign countries and/or terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, and those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As an additional quality assurance measure, this interrogation is non-case sensitive and does not require leading or trailing spaces. Each matching account is then manually reviewed and only those that are believed to truly be potential OFAC accounts are assigned confidence code  8 A (not shown in the Figures) in addition to a state code of “OF”. The balance of the matching records retain their original confidence and state codes, but a physical listing of all accounts is provided as a separate report to allow the client to verify these accounts individually.  
         [0036]     At  308  it is determined whether a client-provided suppression file should be applied to the address. If it is, matching is performed at  310  and if a match is determined at  312 , confidence code  9 A is assigned at  314 . At  316  it is determined whether no confidence code has been assigned. If no code was assigned, code  5 A is assigned at  318 . The process loops at  320  back to subroutine A  78  ( FIG. 3 ).  
         [0037]     Returning to  FIG. 2 , the state finder selection  66  invokes subroutine F  82  looping until end of file as indicated by  80 . Subroutine F is illustrated in  FIG. 8 . Starting at  414 , the city of the address is compared to the USPS city/state table. If a match is determined at  416 , all of the matching states are appended to the record at  418 . At  420  the city is matched to an additional table of non-USPS verified city/state listings. If a match is found at  422 , all of the matches are appended to the record at  424  and the routine loops at  426  until end of file.  
         [0038]     Returning again to  FIG. 2 , the zip finder selection  68  runs the client file through subroutine G  86  until end of file as indicated by  84 . Subroutine G is illustrated in  FIG. 7 . Starting at  400 , the city and state fields of each record are compared to a city/state/zip code table. If a match is determined at  402 , it is determined at  404  whether there is one preferred zip code for this city+state combination, at  406  if there is no preferred but one approved, and at  410  if there is only one zip code that is not approved. At  408  the zip code and its type (preferred, approved, not approved) are appended to the record and the process loops at  412  to the next record.  
         [0039]     Referring once again to  FIG. 2 , if the manual review option is selected as determined at  70 , subroutine H  90 , is invoked to loop to the end of the client&#39;s file as indicated by  88 . Subroutine H is illustrated in  FIG. 6 . Manual review is performed at  322 . Within the manual review process, judgment calls are made to identify spelling errors (e.g. ASHBURHAM, MA to ASHBURNHAM, MA) and to assign states to recognizable city names (e.g. BOSTON COLLEGE, MO to BOSTON COLLEGE, MA). Typographical errors (e.g. DRAINTREE to BRAINTREE), character transpositions (e.g. COHCITUATE to COCHITUATE), and phonetic errors (e.g. CHICKOPE to CHICOPEE) are detected. Directional abbreviations that were not fully expanded (e.g. S BOSTON to SOUTH BOSTON) are also identified and in some cases decisions are made based upon directionals that weren&#39;t recognized by the USPS (e.g. SOUTH HYANNISPORT to HYANNISPORT). Multi-word city names that were concatenated in error (e.g. VANDEUSENVILLE to VAN DEUSENVILLE) are also corrected.  
         [0040]     When manually adjusting state assignments, it is more likely to make changes that are in close physical proximity to the provided state, or those whose state acronym is similar, and/or to those that are more distinctive. Because of the subjective nature of this process, there is an error-factor, which is mitigated by having highly trained staff members making these decisions with client oversight as appropriate. When conducting a manual review, there are 3 options, with regard to the level of attention given on average to each account reviewed. Selecting “Normal” will involve a manual review of up to 30 seconds on average per account reviewed. This is adequate time to visually identify the account owner&#39;s probable city and state within the encumbered account, as available. Once identified, there is sufficient time to scan through a list of all valid city names for a particular state to see if a substantially similar city name exists, but may not have been identified programmatically for one of the reasons mentioned above. For large blocks of addresses with common unmatched city names, the 30 second window additionally allows for 1-2 separate internet searches using a search engine or website to try to further isolate a valid escheat state. Also, in cases where there is a reasonably large sized block of common city names, additional time may be dedicated to lookup the actual street address within a national USPS postal database.  
         [0041]     If, instead of selecting “Normal”, the client selects “Comprehensive”, then the manual review will average 1-minute per account on average and sometimes longer, depending on the client&#39;s specific requirements. As such, this will allow adequate time to conduct a more detailed search on each account as needed.  
         [0042]     Selecting “Cursory” will involve a brief review of no more than 10 seconds per account on average. This is adequate time to visually identify and lookup the account owner&#39;s city name, but is not sufficient time to do an extended review of any one account.  
         [0043]     If after manual review an escheat state is determined at  324 , it is assigned with a confidence code at  326 . A quality control review is performed at  328  by a second reviewer and the process loops through all of the records at  330 . When the process is complete, routine J is called at  332 .  
         [0044]     Turning now to  FIG. 11 , routine J is called at  332 . If it was selected to upload the output file into the online DataBase Management System (DBMS) at  334 , then routine L is called at  520 . If the output file was not selected for upload into the online DBMS at  334 , or if the edit period for the online DBMS has expired and returned at M 540 , then reports are generated at  336  and shipped to the client at  338 . The main program is resumed at  340 .  
         [0045]     Turning to  FIG. 12 , if routine L was called at  520 , then the online DBMS is accessed at  522 , with data uploaded at  524 , database layouts being defined at  526 , job submitted at  528  and the database creation process taking place at  530 . Once the database has been created online, user logon and security permissions are established by an administrator at  532  and an edit period begins whereby users are able to edit the database as per approved guidelines begins at  534 , continues through  536  and ends when the edit period expires at  538 . The program is resumed in  FIG. 11  at  540 .  
         [0046]     Returning once again to  FIG. 2 , the last subroutine Z is invoked at  92 . This subroutine, shown in  FIG. 10 , simply closes the input and output files at  508  and exits at  72  where it returns to polling for new jobs ( FIG. 2 ).  
         [0047]     According to the presently preferred embodiment of the invention, client data files are filtered so that extraneous account identification information such as “JTWROS”, “UGMA”, “UTMA”. “CUSTODIAN FOR”, “CUST FOR”, “DECEASED”, “IN TRUST FOR”, “IN TR FOR”; “ACCOUNT DATED”, “ACCT DTD”, “JOINT TENANTS”, “JT TEN”, etc. can optionally be removed from the address record so that it is not mistaken for address information. This information can be removed on a temporary basis only to facilitate the matching process, or it can be additionally removed from the output file in order to produce a data file that is more suitable for mail delivery as per the USPS.  
         [0048]     The output files supplied to clients after processing of their account files includes the original data, corrected addresses (optionally), designation of the escheat state, and confidence level. In addition, client reports preferably include a statistical summary of the overall results including the improvements made by the invention in determining the correct escheat state as compared to the original data and an indication of the total value of the accounts improved by the invention, provided account balances are provided to the system. The client may then use the corrected addresses to attempt to contact the property owner before the property escheats to the jurisdiction, or the jurisdictions can use this information to facilitate their review and improve their ability to reunite the assets with their proper owners.  
         [0049]     There have been described and illustrated herein an abandoned property escheat assignment and reporting system. While a particular embodiment of the invention have been described, it is not intended that the invention be limited thereto, as it is intended that the invention be as broad in scope as the art will allow and that the specification be read likewise. It will therefore be appreciated by those skilled in the art that yet other modifications could be made to the provided invention without deviating from its spirit and scope as so claimed.