A very non-descript white #10 business envelope with a see-through address window came in my mail this morning from something I'd never heard of called "Corporate Regulatory Committee" at 1118 Lancaster Drive #369, Salem OR 97301." "Looks official. Who's that?" I wondered. Turns out to be a variant on the old phone directory billing scam, where people you've never heard of send you an oh-so-official looking letter that very much makes it seem like you already owe them money. Somewhere buried in the verbiage of all these things (amidst all the humorous spelling mistakes, like "procedding" -- how many can you find?) is usually some sort of phrase that explains, to the alert reader, that you don't actually owe anything and that this whole thing has no real connection to the organization that the rest of the hit piece is intended to make you think it's from. Plenty of people get scammed by these sorts of things, even some pretty bright but busy people. Don't be one of them. If you get a letter like this, do not pay, of course, but also do not throw it away. Instead, keep it, and alert the Attorney General and the Secretary of State. (No doubt you'll not be surprised to find that 1118 Lancaster Drive is a private mailbox business, so there's another violation, this one of postal rules, which are that PMBs are supposed to put PMB in their return address.)      CommentsThanks so much for publishing this. It was the only report on Google when I searched for ""corporate regulatory committee" oregon" and our LLC got this exact letter today. We have reported it to the Atty. General and the DOJ. Small business owners are the perfect target for this kind of scam. We are alerting our local business owners of this as well. I want to Thank you as well, it didn't make sense that there's no phone number, I've never heard of a government office on Lancaster & the fee would be due in five days from receipt of the letter & the renewal fee is $100 not $238 so I googled the address so I could call as ask them what the heck, since my renewal is in July, not January. I will be contacting the Att. General & DOJ now! Daniel Eckhart 01/23/2012 14:42
Another thanks from me. I received two of these scam letters today. They must have mailed out a truckload of them. Jamie 01/23/2012 15:33
Thanks so much for posting this where it could be found. I received the letter and was immediately tipped off by the address. A quick search brought me here! It's a shame that there will be some who are victimized by this. 01/23/2012 15:57
Thanks! I received one as well for the City Club of Corvallis and will follow up with the AG's office. Chris B. 01/23/2012 16:28
I just received the exact same letter today (1/23/12). I put in a call to the AG's office and the lady was fully aware of the letter as well as this particular blog post so it looks like the powers that be are fully aware of the situation. The lady asked me to mail them the letter so you may want to do the same: Barbara 01/23/2012 16:46
At first when I opened this letter I was trying to figure out where I was going to come up with the $238 for this fee, since I haven’t made a profit in months. Then I actually read the letter and was relieved with laughter (I thought spell check was pretty much automatic on any word processor these days). Chris B. 01/23/2012 17:25
Follow up: I thought to myself, if this scam is asking for money, then they need a DBA to cash the checks, hence they need to be registered. I looked them up in the Oregon business registry and what do you know, there's a registered contact: Chris, you are right, of course -- I looked him up Saturday and saw that he, naturally, using the same private mail box outlet as his assumed business name (ABN) address -- basically, this bogus Committee is nothing but a guy with a private mailbox, hoping to get people to send money to it. It's possible that he's not even in the US. 01/23/2012 17:51
So glad you posted this as my first reaction was "No official Oregon seal on this - what's up?" and I went straight to Google. Thanks much, I'll be forwarding to the AG and DOJ tomorrow first thing. Gaby 01/23/2012 18:41
Thank you so much for publishing this. I think is also targeting "foreign corporations" ! People from other countries that have a small business in Oregon might think this is a mandatory payment when its not. Levi Cecil 01/23/2012 23:26
I Googled this Nicolai Praporscic guy, and it looks like he's running this scam in Nevada as well. I'll send my letter to the DOJ. PENN 02/05/2012 13:32
THANK YOU SO MUCH! This is amazing and such a fraud. Thank you to everyone who posted this warning -- we almost sent in a check! 2 lawyers ... yikes! Your comment will be posted after it is approved. Leave a Reply |  
  
AuthorJohn Gear is a Salem attorney whose practice is focused on serving Oregon consumers, elders, and nonprofits.  CategoriesAll ArchivesFebruary 2012 |
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