Nearly $72 million dropped into Delaware's treasury last year.

And the state is willing to give it all back, if the owners can be found.

In the meantime, Delaware is happily spending from that pile as if the money belonged to it.

Where does the money come from? Retailers' gift certificates go unredeemed, renters' security deposits go unclaimed, stock dividend checks go uncashed and final paychecks are not delivered. Other money sits in forgotten bank accounts.

Most of it comes here thanks to Delaware's status as a world corporate capital. If unclaimed assets lie dormant for five years in the hands of a Delaware corporation, in many cases they must be turned over to the state.

Indeed, it added up to $71.8 million for the fiscal year that ended last June – about 4 percent of state revenue.

"You might be looking at $10 here and $15 there, but it adds up," said Frank A. Mazlewski Jr., chief of Delaware' s unclaimed property office.

Since 1971, Delaware has taken in $451.2 million in lost assets, not counting a $216.5 million settlement reached in 1995 after a dispute with New York state.

The money, except for the New York settlement, goes directly to the state general fund. Delaware must pay up if the rightful owners come forward – but even then, the state does not pay interest on money it might have held for years.

Still, more owners are claiming their cash these days.

In part, it's because more stockbrokers and other businesses are coming after assets that slip to Delaware by mistake. And the Internet and other media are spreading word of lost property held by states.

"Unclaimed property is becoming a national story. Oprah's done two shows on it," Mazlewski said.

In fiscal 1997, the state returned $14.5 million of the unclaimed money that has poured into Delaware over the years. The state gave back $7.1 million in 1996, and $4.6 million in 1995.

Delaware's paybacks last year outpaced Maryland, which returned $11.6 million in unclaimed funds, and Pennsylvania, which gave back $13.4 million.

Current nationwide benchmarks are not available because of the different ways states account for unclaimed assets, said Valerie Jundt, executive director of the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators.

While Delaware might give back more money than other states, it also pockets more unclaimed money than most.

In fiscal '97, Delaware kept $57.3 million, or four-fifths of its $71.8 million in unclaimed property revenue. Maryland held onto $23.9 million or two-thirds of $35.5 million in revenue, while Pennsylvania kept $42.2 million or three-quarters of its $55.6 million.

But Delaware's unique status as a corporate capital, which is largely behind the state's unclaimed-property windfall, makes comparisons tough.

Each state can collect from two separate streams of unclaimed money. First, there are cases such as a dormant bank account, in which an owner's name and address are on record.

Say the account owner dies, or moves without leaving a forwarding address. Banks that can't track down the customer or an heir turn the money over to the state of the account owner' s last known address.

But in other cases, there is no known address.

Take that $25 department store gift certificate you gave your dad. Dad, who's a bit forgetful, thanked you kindly and then let the certificate slip to the back of his sock drawer.

Five years later, the $25 you paid the department store still has not been claimed by its rightful owner, Dad. The department store does not have Dad's name and address, either.

So by law, the store turns the money over to the state in which it's incorporated – which likely as not is Delaware. Consider, for instance, all the gift certificates issued by the likes of Wal-Mart or Sears.

"It's not like every state gets this kind of money. Virtually all of it goes to Delaware," state revenue director Bill Remington said.

The state-of-incorporation rule applies not just to retailers, but to all businesses that end up holding money for customers with unknown addresses.

Stockbrokers incorporated in Delaware, for instance, last year contributed $38 million – or more than half of Delaware's revenue from unclaimed assets.

Still, that's what falls between the cracks out of the billions of dollars that brokers handle.

Corporations issue dividends to brokers for their stockholders, but some of the stockholders may have moved to new brokers. The new broker may pay the stockholder directly and then collect the dividend from the former broker.

The claims fly back and forth among brokers, and sometimes small amounts are not worth the time and trouble of collecting.

That leaves the former broker holding the leftover dividend, unsure of who the rightful owner is. The new broker has paid off its account holders, and has a rightful claim on the dividend. But if the funds are not claimed, the former broker does not know where to send the excess – and it ends up with the broker's state of incorporation.

Delaware's claim on dividend excess was bolstered by a 1993 U.S. Supreme Court decision, ending a long dispute with New York state, followed by the 1995 settlement of $216.5 million paid over five years.

While brokers may be sending more to Delaware's unclaimed property office, they are also coming in to claim more as theirs. Of 1997's $14.5 million in payouts, $9 million went to brokers, Mazlewski said.

More than $5.2 million went to property owners from other states or countries. Finally, $275,995 went to claimants with Delaware addresses. Strip out the millions of dollars Delaware collects as a corporate capital, and a relatively tiny amount remains due to real Delawareans.

The amount handed out last year represented more than half of the $504,422 received by the state in cases linked to an owner's name and a Delaware address. That total was due to 2,300 individuals, for an average of $219 each.

Mazlewski's office mails notices to last known addresses. Each year, the office takes out newspaper ads listing the names that have come in that year. Banks and insurance companies holding dormant accounts or unclaimed benefits are required to do likewise.

"My bet is they're no longer around" in many cases, Remington said. Some owners move out of state without leaving a forwarding address; others die without leaving Delaware heirs.

"The Web site is probably the key to catching the hard ones," he said.

The unclaimed property office launched its World Wide Web site last month, joining about 25 other states to do so.

Delaware's site lists about 35,000 unclaimed property owners with Delaware addresses – names that have accumulated since the mid-1980s.

Mazlewski hopes to post the 450,000 or so additional names on file, mostly those with no last known address, overseas addresses or incomplete ones. "I would love to have all of them on there. I'm not sure we ever will," he said.

"I have hundreds of John Smiths," he said. Handling such claims could be a nightmare, when there's no address to help identify one John Smith out of hundreds.

Still, Mazlewski plans to take his database of 485,000 names to the people – specifically, the people in shopping malls.

Toting laptop computers, his staff will team up with similar offices in other states to visit malls this summer. Passers-by can have unclaimed property databases searched for their names.

Representatives from Delaware and Maryland will set up June 27 at the Centre at Salisbury mall north of Salisbury, Md. Pennsylvania will join the other two states July 18 at Christiana Mall.

Mazlewski's office has taken a similar road show to the Delaware State Fair for about five years.

Much of the lost money Delaware collects, however, belongs to far-flung owners whose names are long lost. "It's the nature of the stuff we're taking in. There's no way we're going to find these people," Mazlewski said, "even if we had 20 people and all they did was try to find people."

Still, he has pushed to find them.

"It's just good public policy," he said. "We have this money for people, and we're trying ... to get it out there."