[mattmcknight]

That's like saying I hit closing time while I was at the video arcade playing Pac-Man so the government should be able to take the remaining cash value of my quarter for the unconsumed pac-dots, even though my game ended. The minutes are a temporal good, only valid within a timeframe. There is no remaining value to escheat, because they are expired.

[DougBTX]

That might very well be the case that gets argued, though note that expired gift cards can also be reclaimed by the government. A quick read of the link posted by patio11 suggests that states may declare that gift cards should have no expiry dates, perhaps they could force a similar ruling onto pre-pay call cards.

Clearly there is enough grey space to go to court about it.

[mattmcknight]

It just seems to fail a very simple test of allowing the government to steal money from any one that offers any thing that has an expiry. To take it out of the virtual world- can the government escheat from a restaurant the remaining value of food at a buffet restaurant where you are allowed five trips to the buffet but only use two? The expired items have no value, so there is nothing to escheat.

It's true that they could declare a law against expiry, but that would seem to be a completely separate case.