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Sep
16 • 2026
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Scammers Target Business Owners with Text Messages

The convenience of online systems for filing required documents, including annual reports, with state officials has, unfortunately, carried with it an increased threat of the information made publicly available through those same systems (or otherwise) being used to rip off small business owners. Not long ago, we warned of a scam whereby wrongdoers apply for credit in the name of a business after changing that business’s information through bogus filings with state officials.[1] Here we describe another scheme that, while potentially less damaging to any one business, may be even more insidious in that the smaller loss per business may render the scam harder to detect.

In this particular scam, the fraudsters obtain contact information for business owners through publicly available sources.[2] The wrongdoers then send the business owners texts and/or emails reminding them to file their annual reports and maybe even annual meeting minutes (even though annual meeting minutes do not actually need to be filed with the secretary of state) and providing links to websites that can supposedly be used to file the documents and pay the required fees. But the fees charged by the miscreants are much higher than what it actually costs to file the documents directly with the secretary of state’s office (such as $200 instead of $60).

In the version of this scheme targeted by the Washington State Attorney General’s Office in 2023, the scammers sent more than 147,000 deceptive text messages and thousands of additional emails to Washington businesses and nonprofits in a period of just over one year. The scam was sophisticated enough that more than 1,100 Washington companies paid the swindlers the exaggerated fees to file their documents, resulting in cumulative losses in excess of $228,000.[3]

Washington’s example provides an object lesson to business owners everywhere: be wary of communications, even official looking ones from a state office, asking you to shell out money. Note, however, just how crafty some of these schemes are. In one of its press releases, the Washington State Attorney General’s Office noted that while the Washington Secretary of State does not send “text solicitations” to companies, it does send reminders by “mail or email” to file an annual report each year by the last day of the month in which the company was originally formed.[4] That potentially makes it that much harder to determine when a mail or email contact ostensibly from a state office is a hoax, leaving business owners no choice but to be on their guard at all times.[5]

 

[1]See eMinutes, Monitoring Your Corporate Identity to Prevent Business Identity Theft (June 10, 2026).

[2]The scam is described in various press releases from the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, which brought suit, and obtained court orders, to stop the widespread fraud being carried out there. See Wash. State Office of the Att’y Gen., AG Ferguson: Companies sent hundreds of thousands of deceptive texts, emails targeting small businesses, nonprofits (May 9, 2023); Wash. State Office of the Att’y Gen., AG Ferguson: Court shuts down websites of companies that targeted small businesses with deceptive messages (Oct. 27, 2023); Wash. State Office of the Att’y Gen., Scam alert: Fraudulent Secretary of State notices targeting Washington small businesses (Dec. 4, 2024).

[3]Wash. State Office of the Att’y Gen., AG Ferguson: Court shuts down websites of companies that targeted small businesses with deceptive messages (Oct. 27, 2023). Washington’s Attorney General at the time suspected that the number of companies deceived, and their losses, was even higher than that. Id. The court in which the Attorney General filed suit against the con artists eventually ordered them to pay $450,636, which included restitution, plus interest and civil penalties. See Wash. State Office of the Att’y Gen., Scam alert: Fraudulent Secretary of State notices targeting Washington small businesses (Dec. 4, 2024).

[4]See Wash. State Office of the Att’y Gen., AG Ferguson: Companies sent hundreds of thousands of deceptive texts, emails targeting small businesses, nonprofits (May 9, 2023).

[5]The Washington Secretary of State has published some tips to help determine whether a notice received by a business owner is or is not an official notice from the Secretary of State. See Wash. Sec’y of State, Third-Party Notices and Solicitations: Tips & Examples.