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There's a similar scam in europe with trademark registrations, funnily enough there are more than one operator trying this so you get 3 or 4 of invoices to reg
by cynusx 7y ago
There's a similar scam in europe with trademark registrations, funnily enough there are more than one operator trying this so you get 3 or 4 of invoices to register your trademark after you've registered your trademark.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoThis is common not just in SoCal, but across the US, with property deeds, mortgage insurance, lots of shady businesses preying on the ignorance of property owners when public record transactions are updated. A simple fix would be to dictate, through legislation, that you can't provide a government service such as a copy of your deed at a cost substantially above the cost the government is providing it at.
- OedipusRex 7y agoSame thing happens to website owners, I get a ton of mail with convincing enough fake bills for scam services.
- frgotmylogin 7y agoA nonprofit that mails to lists based on the same thing, but with a postcard listing common scams would be pretty cool. I was shocked by how much of this stuff I got when I bought a house.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoI would be very interested in partnering with local outreach groups and/or Code For America to spin this up with Lob. After a postcard is designed, the only cost should be postage (which, based on Lob's pricing, looks to be between 41 cents and $1 per piece) and some compute time for taking property record data and generating mail pieces with API calls to Lob. Not a permanent solution, but an effective shim until regulation catches up. "Department of Hotfixes"
- frgotmylogin 7y agoLet me know if you do it!
- docdeek 7y agoAnother similar scam in France when you register a company - you’ll get a half dozen official looking letters asking for a payment of hundreds of euros for a stamp and inclusion in their registry of businesses. Usually has a deadline of within 31 days of registration of the business, and a note that looks official that should be kept for the accountant. All rubbish, of course, and reliant on people who are unaware of what is actually required to register a business paying every damn bill that arrives to be sure to be on the right side of the law.
- mamon 7y agoSame thing happens in Poland.
- Goz3rr 7y agoSomething similar happens if you own a domain name. They'll send you an "invoice" for your domain by email or physical post hoping that someone who doesn't know too much about IT or just blindly pays invoices to fall for it. If you read the fine print it actually says that it's not an invoice but an offer to transfer to their registrar or something.
- duskwuff 7y agoDon't forget the offers for "important" (actually worthless) services related to your domain, like search engine listings or other useless SEO services. Thankfully, increased privacy on WHOIS records have clamped down on these practices.
- koolba 7y agoThat scam exists in the USA too. Anybody with their contact details on file gets a barrage of scamola emails and snail mail.
- telesilla 7y agoI got one of these last week and almost lazily put it on the to-be-paid pile until I realized that I had a memory of paying for it already on the USPTO site, and double checked. They made it seem old school enough that it could have been a government letter.
- kohanz 7y agoI just got one of these this week! Only $3,000 to register the trademark "internationally", but they try their best to make it seem like it's part of the registration process you've already undertaken and you simply need to sign & submit to move forward.
- gk1 7y agoI got a bunch of these "trademark protection" bills after registering a trademark this year. Very official-looking. First one almost had me fooled, but then I caught onto it.
- GordonS 7y agoCan confirm, this has been going on for at least 15 years, so enough people must fall for it. Which is kind of remarkable, given as you say, you tend to receive 3-4 of these demands at once. They are quite good at looking "official" though, and always have company names that you'd think private companies wouldn't even be permitted to use. Given how long this has been going on, and given the EU's somewhat notorious legislative machine, it's also quite ridiculous that these scams haven't been outlawed yet.