A criminal hurts you. A judge orders him to pay you restitution. The criminal actually pays. The government gets the money. And you still don’t. Welcome to America’s unclaimed restitution system.
I spend a lot of time investigating money that belongs to ordinary Americans but somehow winds up in government hands.
California auditors recently examined the state’s criminal restitution system and found 9,834 cases in which offenders had fully paid their restitution orders. California estimated it had usable contact information for only about 4,300 of those cases.
The auditor concluded that nearly 60% of the fully paid restitution amounts it examined could not be distributed. At least 11,000 victims were caught up in the broader problem. The criminal paid. The state had the money. The victim still didn’t get it.
Government seems to have no trouble finding you when you owe it money. Miss a tax bill and see how quickly the letters arrive. States can garnish wages, intercept tax refunds, levy accounts and track down debtors using government databases. But when the government owes YOU money?
Suddenly everybody is Sherlock Holmes without a clue. Colorado provides a perfect example. Jamie Burden was ordered to pay more than $8,000 after wrecking a stolen motorcycle. He said the state took half his paycheck for years until the restitution was paid.
Then he discovered that the people he thought he had been paying never got the money. Because of a dispute over who was entitled to it, the cash eventually wound up in Colorado’s unclaimed restitution system.
In New York, certain restitution payments that go unclaimed for a year can eventually be redirected toward other unpaid restitution orders.
The theory is understandable. If Victim A cannot be found, use the money to help Victim B. There is just one problem. It isn’t Victim B’s money. A judge specifically ordered that money paid to Victim A.
Florida takes this strange logic even further. State law allows victim restitution that remains unclaimed for one year after an offender’s supervision ends to be transferred into Florida’s General Revenue Fund.
General revenue is the giant pot of money government uses to run government. Restitution was not collected to pave roads, pay bureaucrats or balance a budget. It was collected for the victim of a crime.
I have not found a public accounting showing how much victim restitution Florida has transferred into general revenue. Nor is it clear from the law what happens when a victim appears years later asking for money that has already been transferred. Florida should tell taxpayers.
To be fair, states face a real problem. Victims move. People die. Businesses close. Some restitution arrives years after a crime. But there is a simple answer. Try harder.
Virginia does. When courts cannot locate restitution victims, the money can go to the Virginia Victims Fund, which then conducts additional searches using information from prosecutors and law enforcement.
In Fiscal Year 2025, Virginia courts sent the fund about $1.57 million in unclaimed restitution. The fund later located victims and paid about $175,000 back to them. Amazing what happens when the government actually looks.
Every state should be required to use modern databases to find victims before touching their money. Every victim should retain the right to reclaim restitution indefinitely. And states should disclose exactly how much victim money they are holding and where it goes.
A judge identified the victim. A judge determined what that victim was owed. The criminal paid. At that point, government has one job left. Give the victim the damn money.
Lewyn is a former staff writer for BusinessWeek and USA Today’s Money section and the founder of unclaimedmoneyguy.com.
© 2026 New York Daily News
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/governments-take-stocks-without-permission-happens-all-time
By Mark Lewyn
PUBLISHED: August 17, 2026 at 5:00 AM ET