Audit of the Office of the State Treasurer and Receiver General (December 18, 2025)

This is a state performance audit of the Massachusetts Treasurer’s Office, covering certain activities from July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2024.

“In accordance with Section 12 of Chapter 11 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor has conducted a performance audit of certain activities of the Office of the State Treasurer and Receiver General (OST) for the period July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2024.”

Auditors checked whether the Treasurer’s Office properly handled unclaimed property claims and veterans’ bonus claims under state rules and its own policies.

“The purpose of our audit was to determine the following:”

If the veterans’ bonus process fails, veterans who qualify for state bonus payments may face long delays or miss payments entirely.

“If OST’s VB Division does not ensure that all eligible VB claims are processed correctly, then eligible veterans may experience delays in receiving their payments or may not receive them at all.”

For an ordinary citizen, the key point is that the audit checked whether public programs that return money or pay earned benefits are working properly.

“OST’s UCP is responsible for the administration and protection of unclaimed property belonging to the state’s citizens.”

The unclaimed property work passed the audit testing, but the veterans’ bonus work only partly passed because some approved claims were voided and not reprocessed until auditors raised the issue.

“For this objective, we found no significant issues during our testing.”

The Treasurer’s Office says it is moving to a new claims system and updating policies; the Auditor’s Office says it will follow up in about six months.

“As part of our post-audit review process, we will follow up on this matter in approximately six months.”

The problem affected 5 of 24 amended claims tested, totaling $3,800, and delayed payments by about 540 days on average.

“The bonus payments were delayed by an average of approximately 540 days between the date of the claim approval and the date of the bonus payment issuance.”

“Batch processing” means the system handles many claims together at once; in this audit, when one batch had errors, all claims in that batch could be voided and needed review.

“Batch processing is a method of processing large sets of data at one time to improve efficiency.”