There are a lot of different kinds of scams to look for. They are found in every aspect of the financial and economic system. This can make it overwhelming to know what to look for. However, we have identify certain scams that come about when people wish to register their businesses with the government.
REGISTRATION FILING FEES
Each state requires a new business to register with the government. Requirements vary state to state, but typically there are filing fees involved. Some bad actors will try to trick you by saying that you need to pay these fees through a third party. As of writing this, there is no state that requires you to do this. So if you find yourself in a situation in which someone is telling you to pay to the government through them, be sure to understand what the rules actually are and do not be fooled by their tricks.
DBA RENEWAL FEES
It may come as a letter, or an email. It will probably say that it came from the state, and you must do something like paying a fee or making a call to a phone number (which will probably tell you to pay a fee). If you do not, then you will lose the rights to your business name and someone else will be able to claim it. The thing is that state regulatory agencies do not send letter like these. Another red flag to look for is to see if the money amount asked is greater than $100, some business registration companies let you start your business for free. So if you are looking to renew your DBA, the first thing you should know is that you can do it by yourself without a third party to help you in minutes. Look up in government pages by when do you need to renew your DBA and compare with your registration.
LEGAL FEES
There are many documents that need to be in order to be a business owner. Many licenses and permits require filing fees. So many scammers try to sell you fake licenses that you do not need or pretend to be a legitimate source for real legal documents. To avoid these, we suggest to look up for government agencies for what documents you actually need. If you look online, look for whether the site ends in .org, or .gov. Most government sites will either have the option to purchase the documents, or will direct to where you might get them.
FAKE INSPECTIONS
There are a few goals for faking being an inspector. They may aim to trick business owners into creating fake "verified" accounts for online retail services. They may just ask for your credit card information or commit fraud. Official agencies ask people to report any calls claiming to be government inspectors who ask for credit card numbers and/or personal information to their local authority. A sign of this kind of scam is the fact that a number of regulatory agencies do not call in advance for their inspections. If you have any concerns that you were called by a fake, call the relevant government agency to see if they are real or not.
DOMAIN NAME
There are a few scams involving domain names. They may claim that they is an interested buyer looking to buy their domain for a convincing amount of money, only as a means to get them to purchase a domain appraisal service and never provide the service. Do not pay for these services, the buyer should be the one purchasing the service and if you really want to know what your domain is worth there are free online tools for that. There is domain renewal scams, that try to alarm the victim into paying for a fake renewal service. And so on and so forth. In general, our advice is to be thorough in reviewing any emails asking you to pay for something, specially if they say its urgent. There are many tools like SpamAssassin, an open-source project who can help you verify whether something is a scam or not. Regardless, always verify to see if the person contacting you is really the person they claim to be.
