California Unclaimed Property Scraper

Search California's official Unclaimed Property database, maintained by the California State Controller's Office (SCO). Look up unclaimed cash, uncashed checks, dormant accounts, and unclaimed securities by owner name, or browse by dollar-value range, city, or the business that reported the property. The SCO currently holds more than $8 billion in unclaimed property for millions of individuals and businesses. No login, no API key, no paid proxy.

What this actor does

• Three modes: search (by owner name), browse (filter without a name), and byId (exact lookup of one property by its Property ID — also returns every co-owner row for that property)
• Filters: owner city/state/ZIP/country, holder (reporting business) name/city/state, property-type keyword, property category (top-level NAUPA grouping), CUSIP (security identifier), cash-balance range, and dollar-value bucket
• Sorting: rank results by highest/lowest current cash balance or owner name A-Z/Z-A, keeping the top maxItems
• Full financial detail: current cash balance, cash/shares originally reported, security name, claim counts
• Owner and holder contact info: name, address, city, state, ZIP, country for the property owner and the business that reported it
• Deduplicated results — the SCO's own source files occasionally contain exact-duplicate rows; this actor automatically filters them out so you never see the same property/owner combination twice (legitimate co-owner rows on the same property are kept, since those describe different people)
• Empty fields are omitted — every field present in a record has a real value

Output per unclaimed-property record

• propertyId — the SCO's internal property identifier
• propertyType — NAUPA property-type code and description (e.g. securities, wages, safe deposit box contents)
• ownerName, ownerAddress, ownerCity, ownerState, ownerZip, ownerCountry
• numberOfOwners — number of owners on record (some properties are jointly owned)
• cashReported, sharesReported, securityName — the amount/security originally reported to the state
• currentCashBalance — current dollar value held by the state
• pendingClaims, paidClaims — how many claims have been filed / paid against this property
• holderName, holderAddress, holderCity, holderState, holderZip — the business/entity that reported the property
• cusip — security identifier, when the property is a stock/bond
• valueRangeBucket — which value bucket this record came from
• sourceFile — the specific source CSV file the record was read from
• sourceUrl — the official California claim-search page
• recordType: "unclaimedProperty", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	search	search (owner name required), browse (no name required), or byId (propertyId required)
ownerName	string	Smith	Owner name to search for (mode=search); case-insensitive substring match
propertyId	string	–	Exact Property ID to look up (mode=byId); returns every co-owner row for that property
ownerCity	string	–	Only keep records whose owner city contains this text
ownerState	string	–	Only keep records with this exact owner state (2-letter code)
ownerZip	string	–	Only keep records whose owner ZIP starts with this value (94105 or a shorter prefix like 941)
ownerCountry	string	–	Only keep records whose owner country code contains this text (e.g. USA, CAN, MEX)
holderName	string	–	Only keep records whose reporting business ("holder") contains this text
holderCity	string	–	Only keep records whose holder city contains this text
holderState	string	–	Only keep records with this exact holder state (2-letter code)
propertyTypeContains	string	–	Only keep records whose property-type text contains this keyword
propertyCategory	string	–	Only keep records in this top-level NAUPA category (Accounts, Checks, Securities, Insurance, etc.)
cusip	string	–	Only keep records with this exact security identifier (CUSIP)
minCashBalance	int	–	Drop records below this current cash balance (USD)
maxCashBalance	int	–	Drop records above this current cash balance (USD)
valueRange	string	500plus	Which value-bucket file(s) to scan: 500plus, 100to500, 10to100, under10, or all
sortBy	string	none	Rank kept records: none (fastest), cashDesc, cashAsc, ownerNameAsc, ownerNameDesc. Any option besides none scans the full selected bucket(s) to guarantee a correct ranking, so it's slower
maxItems	int	50	Hard cap on emitted records (1–5000); with sortBy: "none" the scan stops early once reached, otherwise it's the number of top-ranked records kept

Example: search for a common surname

{
  "mode": "search",
  "ownerName": "Smith",
  "valueRange": "500plus",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: find everything a specific company owes

{
  "mode": "browse",
  "holderName": "Bank of America",
  "valueRange": "500plus",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: search by name within a city, high-value only

{
  "mode": "search",
  "ownerName": "Garcia",
  "ownerCity": "Los Angeles",
  "minCashBalance": 1000,
  "valueRange": "500plus",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: browse unclaimed securities

{
  "mode": "browse",
  "propertyTypeContains": "Securities",
  "valueRange": "100to500",
  "maxItems": 200
}

Example: look up a specific property by ID

{
  "mode": "byId",
  "propertyId": "17285281",
  "valueRange": "500plus"
}

Example: highest-value accounts, sorted

{
  "mode": "browse",
  "propertyCategory": "AC",
  "sortBy": "cashDesc",
  "valueRange": "500plus",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Use cases

• Consumer finance apps — help users check whether the state is holding money owed to them
• Estate & probate research — locate unclaimed assets belonging to a deceased relative
• Skip tracing & asset recovery — professional locators identifying property to help claim on behalf of owners
• Business AR recovery — companies checking whether refunds, uncashed vendor checks, or old payroll ended up with the state
• Journalism & data research — analyze unclaimed-property trends by city, business, or property type

FAQ

What is the data source? The California State Controller's Office (SCO) Unclaimed Property Program, which publishes its complete public database as CSV files, refreshed every Thursday.

Is this affiliated with the State of California? No — this is an independent third-party actor built on the SCO's public data files.

Why is the database split into value ranges? The SCO publishes the ~10+ million property records as four separate files by dollar value to keep individual file sizes manageable. This actor lets you pick which range(s) to search.

Why does valueRange: "all" take longer? It scans all four files (several gigabytes of data in total) instead of just one. For most searches, the default 500plus bucket is both the fastest and the most relevant, since it covers the highest-value properties.

Does this cover other states? No — this actor covers California only, currently the single largest state unclaimed-property program in the US. Most other states run their own separate unclaimed-property programs.

How do I actually claim property I find? Visit the official claim page at claimit.ca.gov and search using the same owner name — the record's propertyId helps you identify the exact match.

How fresh is the data? The SCO refreshes its public files weekly (every Thursday). scrapedAt on each record reflects when this actor ran, not when the underlying file was last published.

Why do some records show an out-of-state owner address? People move. The state holds property under the last known address reported by the holder business, which is often years old.