The State of Maine is currently seeking ways to enforce Maine’s unclaimed property laws in an attempt to apply them to unclaimed gift cards.

If the cards were purchased in Maine, the state is claiming $60 of their $100 combined value.

“There is a windfall of sizable proportions here that Maine law wants to return to the consumers,” said state Treasurer, David Lemoine, “and that the national retailers want to hold on to.” Lemoine hasn’t had success thus far in getting the retailers to pay up.

Most gift cards issued by retailers have no expiration date, and Maine is among the states that prohibits expiration dates on the cards. But after two years the cards are regarded as dormant in Maine, and a new law aimed at out-of-state companies says the state is entitled to 60 percent of the value.

“States have no legitimate claim to the money whatsoever,” Craig Shearman of the National Retail Federation told MSNBC. “This is really a situation where states are seeing revenue shortfalls, and they’re looking for ways to put their hands in somebody else’s pocket to cover their tax situations.”

Lemoine recently lost around $20 million of taxpayer money from the state’s treasury in a bunk investment in subprime mortgages.

Retailers are either ignoring Lemoine’s letters or are refusing to pay so Lemoine has turned the matter over to the Maine Attorney General. Maine is among more than 30 states that currently apply unclaimed property laws to gift cards sold by in-state retailers.