washingtonannualreports.com scam

Did you receive a text message from 62516 (or similar) with the following message?

Winter Web Works LLC to stay compliant, file a Washington annual report here: file.washingtonannualreports.com/605333740 reply STOP to opt-out

Of course, your business name would be in place of mine. The URL would also differ. In fact, you can change the URL however you’d like and see other businesses in their database. Try changing the above URL from 605333740 to 605333741 for example.

Anyway, this is not actually the state of Washington’s Department of Revenue or Secretary of State reaching out to you. This is a company called Ebizfile (or washingtonannualreports) that provides a filing service in which you pay them $200 and they go ahead and file the $70/year annual report for you, netting them a $130 profit. You could do this yourself however within 5 minutes by logging into your account at https://ccfs.sos.wa.gov

The names and members of any business is public information and can be easily looked up within government websites. For many years now, they’ve been sending out mailers that look arguably official and government-issued. However, take a close look at the footnotes of the letter and you’ll see “Ebizfile LLC”. It appears that in recent years they have now evolved to sending text messages to business’ phone numbers. Don’t be fooled!