Warning: California Businesses Bombarded with Bogus Solicitations

Many California business owners have been bombarded with notices suggesting that if they do not send money to the “Corporate Compliance Board”, or similarly named nonexistent government agency, their corporation or LLC will be hit with fees and fines. In response, the California Secretary of State has issued an Alert. See, http://www.sos.ca.gov/business/be/alert-misleading-solicitations.htm

These are bogus solicitations and do not require any action on the part of the company. The solicitations request that a fee be returned, along with a completed form to ensure that the company will remain in compliance with California law. The companies responsible for the solicitations are not affiliated with the California Secretary of State’s office and may not be handling the filings properly.

There are many versions of the solicitation, but they all appear very similar to the Secretary of State’s Statement of Information form. In addition to their official-looking appearance, they usually contain the company’s file number or corporate number. In many cases, the corporate number on the solicitation does not match the actual file number for the company assigned by the Secretary of State. Further, the solicitations indicate an arbitrary due date. In California, all Statements of Information are due on the last day of the month of formation. They will never be due on a date other than the last day of a month.

If you have any doubt whether a form is a solicitation, you should contact your corporate attorney. If you have remitted payment in response to one of these solicitations, you should immediately make sure that your company is actually in compliance with its filings. The Secretary of State has requested that those who received a bogus solicitation contact the California Attorney General’s office at the California Department of Justice, Public Inquiry Unit, P.O. Box 944255, Sacramento, California 94244-2550 or through the California Attorney General’s website at www.ag.ca.gov/consumers/general.php. The telephone number for the Public Inquiry Unit is (800) 952-5225 (toll free in California) or (916) 322-3360.