Do you want to be an American idiot flooding back on seven hundred WW Man, We've got everything going on all at the same time. We'll begin with this story. This morning, federal judge has allowed Ohio, the Buckeye State, to begin transferring unclaimed funds starting first the year of finance at new Brown Stadium and all of these millions, if not hundreds of millions, and now we're into the billions of
dollars when it comes to unclaimed funds at Ohio. There's a lawsuit that was threatened by Mark dan and that has now come to fruition. It's going to challenge this uses or. Judge denied a preliminary injunction. It said Ohio's really don't face a reparable harm since they can still claim their money through twenty thirty six. However, he also rejected the state's motion to dismiss this case entirely. So the judge said, hey, it's it's up to me to
determine if the loss constitutional. He's not here to decide if it's a good idea or not. And he may have a rule land in this as early as Tuesday on whether this preliminary injunction will be granted on this who brought the case forward along with Mark dan As Jeff Crossman of the Dan Law Firm and Cleveland, he's lead council. Jeff, welcome, How are you good?
How are you today?
I'm doing fine. A lot to unpack here as the state tries to move like two billion dollars up to two billion on claim funds into an account of finance, stadiums, cultural projects, stuff like that six hundred million for the Browns, Cincinnati, Columbus and others are probably gonna get some but let's start here. The judge denied your request for the injunction, but allow the case to move forward. So what's the strategy here for you moving forward?
Well, the case is the court noted the case does have merit, so the case will continue and we ultimately will hope to prevail in this case because we think
our constitutional arguments are pretty strong here. It's fundamental to what we all understand then, what the constitution protects, which is your private property right and gives you the opportunity to object when the state tries to take your property, which is not happening here because the state doesn't give anybody notice that they're seeing people's property putting it in a what was supposed to be a lost and found account, but now, as it turned down, out is going to
be used as a slush fund to give out money to various PEP projects of the legislature.
Okay, so we'll unpack this a little bit here too. Let's start with achievement laws. Obviously there are people who will not claim funds despite public notices. Will get to that element in just a second, but typically a state and I think, oh hi, it's like ten years. Basically, if you don't claim something in ten years, it reverts back to the state because the agent assume you don't care or you're dead. Is that the biggest legal hurdle you got to jump over.
There's a lot of challenges to what the state is doing here. First, a lot of people don't know that their property is being seized, and there's really no legitimate or practical way to protect yourself. So every bank account that you own, whether it's a savings account or money market account, or a life insurance policy or even a safe DEPOSITI bok with some personal belongings that may not have economic value but might have personal value to you.
You can't protect yourself from the state seizing that property, liquidating the property, and then you know, turning it over to this slush fund. And we had a gentleman testify the other day, a gentleman from Germany who had this very experience happened him. His entire retirement account, which was held at Charles Schwab, was confiscated by the State of California, liquidated without his knowledge, and he ultimately received only a fraction of what he was owned.
But there's a justification here for dormant money. I mean, if it sits unclaimed for a decade, that suggests owners have forgotten it, moved without affording their information, died without their errors knowing about it, which is unfortunate for sure. But do do you just suggest that this money sits there in perpetuity.
No. I think what the High Supreme Court has been clear about is unclaimed funds doesn't mean abandoned property. A High Supreme Court and a unanimous decision when when does that happen? Often? Right, in a unanimous decision not that long ago said that the unclaim funds is not abandoned. People simply don't know about it. And then the state admitted on the stand repeatedly, over and over again. They do not send any notice to anybody. So they're taking
people's property and liquidating it without their knowledge. So you can't abandon something you don't have notice, gotcha.
On the other hand, we know, I mean, this is probably one of the few things they still do, Jeff is advertisements and newspapers where there's court decisions that you have to publicly notify people, So you put an ad in all the newspaper in each of the eighty eight counties. That's, you know, technologically back in the day that especially. I know't ibody still do that or not. You could probably tell me better. But you know, we have social media,
we have public service campaigns. I mean, isn't there a duty on the part of the person who holds an account or an adult to be aware of what the law is regarding this and therefore be informed. I mean, how far should the state go to make sure someone is dead or incapacitated or simply doesn't care. You can only do so much. And I guess when I look at public notices and newspapers that seems to satisfy the courts. Why not the sun?
Well, two things there one. The US Supreme Court has been repeatedly in multiple cases very clear it is the state's duty, not the individual duty. It is the state's duty. If they want to take your property, find them. The other real problem here is that the data is bad, and we had plenty of people testify, even the state testified that the data is not valid. In a lot of cases, isn'tvalid. They don't have zip code, they don't
have correct addresses. There's people in foreign countries and other states of the United States, Wisconsin, New York, all over the country that publication in Tyhoga County or Hamilton County or Franklin County doesn't reach those folks. So they have no notice at all that your property has been seized by the state of Ohio. The property is going to be liquidated and handed over.
Okay, what the level of notification you think is constitutionally required here?
Then, well, the Supreme Court has been very clear on that too. It has to be something that's calculated to reach that person. So if your data is bad and you're not sending out any notice whatsoever, I can pretty safely say that there's no notice whatsoever.
Yeah, I mean, you have what potentially thirty five thousand claimants living abroad alone would never see those notices. In this day and age where you can do your work from anywhere around the world for that matter, that's lematic. They'd have to change that.
And I'll say this, there are plenty of municipalities and fire departments and all kinds of local governments across the state of Ohio. They have money's and non claimed fund. You can't tell me the State of Ohio doesn't know where the city of Cleveland, City Cincinnati is physically located, where send the checks. They can do that. They can send them notice and tell them that the property is about to be liquidated.
And we're not doing that right now. Just to be clear, they do nothing except here's the website. Find it for yourself.
Correct, gotcha?
Gotcha? If you could point to other I guess precedent. And when it comes to notifying people, I mean I get notifications all the time for them. While things like class action lawsuits, I get a postcard that says you want to be part of this class et cetera. Somehow they can find me there. But the state can in this case.
Believe me, if the state and if you owe taxes to the State of Ohio. They would trying to. I can't imagine why in this case where they owe you money, they're not looking for you.
Right right? He is Jeff Crossman, he is lead counsel in this case against the State of Ohio, the unclaimed funds case. It's going to fund all the public Stadia Cleveland first with three hundred million or six hundred million. I guess I should say out of this up to
two billion dollars unclaimed funds. So if you have an unclaimed a case, or you have unclaimed funds, whether it's a dollar or a million dollars, you have to go to the state website to check your uncamp claim funds and find them for yourself, as opposed to the state doing due diligence to try and find you. That's the crux of the argument he's making. In the judge of federal judges ruled that the case can move forward with
some guardrails in place. There it's I think it was you, or it was Mark dan or I had honi you compared it to unclaimed funds to a dog shelters website. You know, I got I think just within the last year I went on and got like, because of this case, actually I think about four hundred dollars on claim funds I founded or my name and my brother did the same.
But the website itself, I mean I didn't have a problem navigating, but you said, this is like the website itself is terrible, and if it's bad, then it causes people to maybe not look for their funds.
The website is pretty rudimentary. We had a film a tep fight the other day who handles e commerce for BMW internationally, and you know, he's got an IT expert, and he said, there's some fundamental flaws and the way the database captures data, source data and spits it back to you. One of the things we identified originally was one of the planets in the case. His name is pretty common. It's Todd Butler. If you put that name into the database, it fits back a thousand and it
cuts off there. There might be ten thousand Todd Butler's in there. You'll never know whether or not those other ones are in there because it stops giving you results after number one thousand. Then State admitted that the other day. So there's just really no way to know what property you truly have in that whole front. There's no way to search it on.
Imagine a government website or something the government not working properly. Jeff, I'm shocked.
Well, we're here to try to correct the process that was the purpose of the laws. We're not anti stadium construction. We're not anti Cleveland Browns were all sports antire in dan law. But we do think that the government should act constitutionally, and we do think that they should employe some better safeguards to make sure people's rights are protected.
Yeah, and I think it's important Fasta too. This is not about going after the Cleveland Browns with the fund. I mean, look at it this way. So I think someone made the accusation. This is about opposing public funding for stadiums and billionaire stadiums rather than property rights. But would you be in the same position if it were funding schools, hospital something all those on well unclaimed funds.
The way they're doing it is unconstitutional, So you know our position is constitutionally this doesn't make any sense if it was a public purpose, a true public purpose like building a school or building a fire station, for example, that has a much more, much stronger justification than in this case because it is money being used, it's a taking for a non public purpose. Is there there is a problem there too, Jeff?
Is there a way you'd be satisfied? I mean, are you posed to using unclan funds for a public person purposes generally or is it problematic just the stadium funding or is there a way to you, for you and your clients or and your planing to those who brought the suit here for them to be satisfied.
Well, there are two constitutional issues here. One is the purpose of its taking, which you've identified, and secondly is the notice in the new process we need to have an aa public purpose and be they have to improve the new process safeguards here they don't exist right now.
Again, Jeff Crossman's here from the Dan Law firm. He's the lead counsel in this case brought against the State of Ohio, the unclaimed funds case that we've talked about here that would fund stadiums across Ohio. The only problem is it's coming out of unclaimed funds and after ten
years that money would revert back to the state. And he's saying there's just not enough notification in place, safeguards in place, to make sure that your whole and that you get to get your money simply because the state would rather you not. There's a lot of entities would do that too. Right now, the way the lost hands, if money left dormant for ten plus years is presumed to abandon. I guess the question is should the state be able to redirec act unclaimed funds? And we're talking
about what makes that constitutionally acceptable? This morning on the show, where do you think this goes in the next Well, now I think too, didn't I say Tuesday? I believe it's a day a judge should make a decision. Here you confidence is going to move forward.
The judge made a decision on the Pulmerian junction. Now we're moving forward on the case and we're going to decide whether we follow an appeal. And And by the way, I should note that when the state amended the statute, it automatically created a conflict of interest between the stat
and yourself. You know, think about say, you know your investment account at Cheryl Schwab, if Charles Schwab now had an incentive not to tell you how much money was in the account or or what they were doing with the money and that if you don't contact them in a certain amount of time, they can just take your money. We would all fundamentally agree that that's what we would call indezzlement. And essentially what's going on here the state
now has a conflict of interest. They don't have any incentive to tell you that the money is there in the ways about protecting yourself. So, uh, it's a real problem.
Yeah, it seems to be. You know, you laid out a very very good, dynamic case as to why the court should side with you and the plaintiffs in this case simply because the lack of notification in the website is terrible. My last name Sloan, not terribly uncommon, but I could see if your last name is Smith or something. Then if I'm not able to see and find exactly the you know, Jeff Smith that's on there, and there's
probably thousands in the state of Ohio, that's problematic. I mean, even if I want to find my money and that's my common name, it's going to be difficult to do so, and that's part of this lawsuit and rightly, so that's exactly right, all right, So timeline here is now Judges hearing this is probably going to move forward in this case.
Do you think the state eventually settles with this? Are you looking for a settlement or just an outright I mean, what what what happens to the stadium funding model if you win?
Well, that's an open question. I mean that was That's why we argued that it was stafer to keep the money where it is until we litigate the merits of the case. And I think at the end of the day, we're still optimistic that we're going to prevail here. And if that's the case, then there's money. This half a billion dollars or more has left the State of Ohio's coffers. It's going to be taxpayers that have to put back that money.
Yeah, Jeff, all the best. Thanks for jepping on this morn now. You're extremely busy, but I appreciate taking time out to chat here. Jeff Crossmo, the Dan Law firm, lead counsel in this case, All the best, You have a great dable chat. Again, Thanks again, man, I appreciate you. I've got some time here maybe to talk about this. So I don't know if you've checked the Unclaimed fun site. I have, and as I said, found like four hundred bucks or something like that. I thought it was pretty
easy process myself on my name. Okay, this is me here, Boom. But I have a common but not uncommon name. If you have a very common name, I don't know if you found it extremely difficult to navigate this side or not. As I said, I didn't, but your results may vary.
I don't know.
I'm kind of torn on this, but I tend to lean in this one towards more towards the state, and not that I want people to lose their money, but don't know after ten years, seems to me, with all of the information out there, you know, check all you gotta do is check this website. Now, it seems to me that that is on you. Ten years, you don't know that that money's out there. How far? How far should the state go to try and get that money back to you?
Now?
I think two things here are important that the state would have to simply notify you somehow, send you a postcard or whatever it might be, to a reasonable attempt to contact you. I mean, I get contacted by people I don't want contact contacting me all the time. They can find me, but the state can't that's problematic, and as he said, if you have a common name, it's
difficult to navigate the website. That strike too. But I think if the state we're to change those two elements, that to me seems like it would satisfy the claim that they're trying to hold on the money. And you can see that right, there's incentive for the state to hold your cash in an unclaimed account because now it's going to go to fund pet projects that lawmakers will definitely line up to try and get that quote unquote free money, not free, but quote unquote free money in
order to well build something nice to get votes. I'm the guy who got the new Cleveland Stadium. I'm the one who got pay Course Stadium. I'm the one that got GABP made whole again and remodeled. So there's tremendous incentive for the state here. But we'll get your thoughts into the unclaimed funds thing. And like I said, I tend to look at and go all right, I think you fix a website and make a concerned effort, do your due diligence and trying to locate someone with those funds,
then that's probably the best you can do. Outside of the public notices in the website. Your Thoughts five one, three, seven, four, nine hundred, The Big One Talkback VI, the iHeartRadio app. You can get me there if you're listening to the stream through your phone. We'll get do that. We'll get news. We've got weather moving in all sorts of moving parts this morning here on the Scoutslan Show on seven hundred well W