Getting weird mail? In Colorado, it could be business fraud

This story was first published by KUNC.

Around the country, homeowners regularly receive mail that isn’t for them, addressed to unfamiliar businesses. Sometimes, this isn’t a mistake — it's fraud.

In Colorado, this problem is significant. The number of complaints about fake business registrations is growing each year. One of them is Jarrett Taylor. He lives on a suburban street in Longmont, Colorado, a small city north of Denver with his wife, kids, and three dogs.

Several businesses also happen to be located at his address, according to the U.S. mail.

“This is Verve Tech LLC, JJR Goods LLC, DYNAMICDOWN LLC,” Taylor said as he displayed pieces of mail he has received.

More than a dozen letters from credit card companies and shipping companies have piled up, offering their services to these new businesses. Taylor sometimes opens this mail to check if any have credit cards with his name on them before throwing the letters and envelopes out.

“Usually, they just go straight into the recycling can,” he said. “It's a little overwhelming at times.”

Taylor first noticed the mail last summer. The businesses are registered with Colorado’s secretary of state, by unknown people, to his home address.

“I can't exactly tell what they want, other than either to harass us or to try to get money out of us,” Taylor said.

So far Taylor hasn’t lost any money, but he is still worried.

There’s no way to know how many seemingly fake businesses are registered to Colorado addresses. In one recent high-profile example, a family in a small Colorado town discovered hundreds of businesses registered to their home. In another, thousands were located at a Denver office building.

For the homeowners, this nuisance can be part of a much bigger problem — like fraudsters using business registration to appear legitimate when stealing money from people.

“Fraudsters are finding all sorts of ways to trick people,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said to a Denver TV station in May. “A big one is, they actually register a business and they can point people to their registered business.”

Weiser had just announced a slew of lawsuits targeting fraudulent companies linked to everything from cryptocurrency to romance scams.

The problem of business fraud took off during the COVID-19 pandemic. A couple years later, Colorado formed a working group to address these fraudsters.

“They are created to victimize, they are created to steal, they are created to hide in the shadows,” Greg Wertsch, a special agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and working group member, said.

Back then, during one of the group’s meetings, Wertsch said that the people behind these shell companies aren’t worried about getting caught.

“They can simply create a new shell for a buck here in Colorado in under 30 seconds,” he said.

Since then, some security measures for business registration have been put in place. The price to register a business is now up to $50.

Meanwhile, complaints about fraud are growing. More than 11,000 have been filed since the complaint system was created three years ago.

“Honestly, we were expecting a lot fewer complaints to be filed,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, whose office oversees the complaint system. “So this program, I think, has been very much successful.”

But going through the complaint process doesn’t always make the problem go away. Taylor has reported the fraud at his address to the secretary of state’s office.

“They sent a piece of mail that says we've marked these business accounts as fraudulent and they can't be used anymore,” Taylor said.

He has also frozen his credit and changed all of his passwords, just in case. But the strange mail just keeps coming — for those old businesses and new ones.

“And that's kind of where we are — I just have to keep reporting them,” Taylor said. “This is just what life is now.”