Distributions for person difficult to locate; purely hypothetical case

[Guest Enda80]

Purley hypothetical case:

say a taxpayer has a retirement plan for his business, and somehow some transient worker manage to attain eligibility to enter the plan and receive an allocation. However, this transient disappears from the area. The taxpayer does not know if he survives off the grid, frequents flophouses, transients hotels, soup kitchens, shelters, etc. After five years of breaks in service, this person's distributions comes due. How much effort must they put into locating this person? After this minimum required effort, what must they do?

Does the IRS offer letter forwarding services? For unclaimed distributions?

Would unclaimed distributions from a plan go to the Social Security office?

[WDIK]

If you use the search function for the term "missing participant" the number of threads may be overwhelming.

[masteff]

The other search term would be "lost participant".