An unknown enti­ty call­ing itself the “Labor Stan­dards Com­pli­ance Office” is mass mail­ing decep­tive let­ters to Wash­ing­ton busi­ness­es and non­prof­its that appear to be bills from the gov­ern­ment, but are in real­i­ty solic­i­ta­tions for labor posters that can be freely obtained, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute has learned.

One of these sus­pi­cious-look­ing let­ters showed up this after­noon in our mail, and after read­ing the fine print, we called the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son’s office to ask if they were aware of the letter.

It turns out that a lot of oth­er busi­ness own­ers and non­prof­it lead­ers have received iden­ti­cal let­ters. The Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries says many busi­ness­es have called in con­fused… so many that they felt com­pelled to pub­lish a news release:

Scores of busi­ness­es are con­tact­ing the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries to report they have received an offi­cial-look­ing let­ter that implies they must buy required work­place posters or face fines.

L&I did not send the let­ters, but wants to remind com­pa­nies that the work­place posters are avail­able for free.

The mass mail­ing has con­fused many busi­ness own­ers, who assume it’s from L&I. The let­ters say “final notice,” are addressed to indi­vid­ual busi­ness­es, and include a pay­ment stub to pur­chase the posters for $295. It’s true that the state and fed­er­al gov­ern­ments require cer­tain posters be placed at job sites. While pri­vate ven­dors may sell the posters, the gov­ern­ment pro­vides the posters at no cost.

“Our staff has received lots of calls regard­ing what appears to be a bill for gov­ern­ment posters,” said Anne Foote-Soiza, Assis­tant Direc­tor of L&I’s Divi­sion of Occu­pa­tion­al Health and Safe­ty. “L&I wants every­one to under­stand these posters are free for the ask­ing. Please let oth­er busi­ness own­ers know about it, too.”

The free state-required posters are avail­able from any L&I office or by call­ing 1–866-219‑7321 or down­load­ing from the L&I web­site.

The let­ters do not include a tele­phone num­ber, fax num­ber, or email address, or the name of an actu­al per­son. The let­ters are, as the above news release men­tions, addressed to indi­vid­ual busi­ness­es and nonprofits.

The return address reads as follows:

LABOR STANDARDS COMPLIANCE OFFICE
Busi­ness Com­pli­ance Department
1201 Pacif­ic Avenue, 6th Floor
Taco­ma, WA 98402

1201 Pacif­ic Avenue is the address for Wells Far­go Plaza, one of the high­rise com­mer­cial office build­ings in down­town Taco­ma. It is man­aged by Uni­co Prop­er­ties. Com­mer­cial real estate firm Kid­der Matthews, which sells office space in the build­ing, calls it “Taco­ma’s pre­mier Class A office building”.

A search by us of the Sec­re­tary of State’s Cor­po­ra­tions Data­base for “Labor Stan­dards Com­pli­ance Office” yield­ed noth­ing. A search of data­bas­es main­tained by the Depart­ments of Rev­enue and License also yield­ed nothing.

It seems that the “Labor Stan­dards Com­pli­ance Office” is doing busi­ness in Wash­ing­ton State with­out being prop­er­ly licensed or reg­is­tered. How iron­ic. It also appears that they mined pub­licly avail­able busi­ness records for the pur­pose of send­ing this solic­i­ta­tion. The Sec­re­tary of State makes the entire Wash­ing­ton cor­po­ra­tions data­base avail­able in XML and text formats.

Any­one can build a list from those records. State law requires that indi­vid­u­als request­ing cer­tain pub­lic records (like from the PDC or one of the state’s uni­ver­si­ties) cer­ti­fy that they will not use the records for com­mer­cial pur­pos­es. How­ev­er, it isn’t clear to us whether the cor­po­ra­tions data­base is sim­i­lar­ly off-lim­its. There does­n’t seem to be a warn­ing on the Sec­re­tary of State’s website.

This same out­fit — the “Labor Stan­dards Com­pli­ance Office” — appears to be oper­at­ing in oth­er states, too. Just a cou­ple of weeks ago, Ari­zona Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tom Horne pub­lished a news release warn­ing about iden­ti­cal let­ters sent to busi­ness­es in the Grand Canyon State. Here’s his statement:

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tom Horne is today warn­ing Ari­zona con­sumers and small busi­ness­es to be wary of solic­i­ta­tions that appear to be an offi­cial noti­fi­ca­tion from a gov­ern­ment agency.

There is cur­rent­ly an offi­cial look­ing mail­er being sent out by the “Labor Stan­dards Com­pli­ance Office” request­ing a fee (gen­er­al­ly $295) from con­sumers in return for pro­vid­ing up-to-date notices for busi­ness­es to post to com­ply with the State of Ari­zona and the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. This sender is not affil­i­at­ed in any way with the gov­ern­ment, but is instead a pri­vate non-gov­ern­men­tal busi­ness.  Small busi­ness­es are not required to pur­chase these posters and should be wary of the “FINAL NOTICE” and “DUE NOW” claims stat­ed on the mailer.

The Ari­zona Attor­ney General’s Office advis­es con­sumers to read all fine print, do research on com­pa­nies that are list­ed on mail­ers, and be cau­tious about the authen­tic­i­ty of mail­ings that appear to be from a gov­ern­ment agency.

Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Depart­ment of Indus­tri­al Rela­tions released a sim­i­lar warn­ing back in Sep­tem­ber (PDF). It looks like the peo­ple behind this let­ter have been tar­get­ing busi­ness­es in mul­ti­ple states west of the Rock­ies. We assume they are also oper­at­ing the web­site locat­ed at labor­stan­dard­scom­pli­ance­of­fice dot com, which adver­tis­es a phone num­ber (1–888-755‑3386) but no address. The domain is reg­is­tered with NameCheap through the reg­is­trar eNom.

The let­ter is a one-page, two-sided pro­duc­tion. The front side looks like this:

The back side looks like this:

The fine print on the front and back is the real give­away that the let­ter is not from the gov­ern­ment. On the let­ter we got, this para­graph appears just above the bot­tom third of the page, which is designed to be detached and remit­ted with an enclosed return enve­lope. It says, in ALL CAPS (decap­i­tal­ized here for readability):

This is not a bill. This is a solic­i­ta­tion you are under no oblig­a­tion to pay the amount stat­ed above unless you accept this offer. This prod­uct or ser­vice has not been approved or endorsed by any gov­ern­ment agency and this offer is not being made by an agency of the government.

The let­ter may not be a real bill, but it is clev­er­ly designed to look like one. (Evi­dent­ly, that’s why there are dis­claimers on both the front and the back).

The fine print is so small that even a per­son with good eye­sight could not make it out with­out hold­ing it at a very close distance.

The let­ter comes in an offi­cial-look­ing enve­lope which states, “This noti­fi­ca­tion is con­cern­ing your labor law com­pli­ance… Imme­di­ate response request­ed.” Below that is the num­ber 2013, ren­dered as if it were lift­ed right off an IRS form:

If you ask us, this let­ter is the snail mail equiv­a­lent of a phish­ing email. Phish­ing emails are mes­sages that look like they come from a busi­ness or the gov­ern­ment but were real­ly sent by scam­mers. The emails urges recip­i­ents to fol­low a link and input pass­words, con­tact infor­ma­tion, or cred­it card account num­bers into a form on a web­site the scam­mers con­trol. Recip­i­ents are often told the agency or busi­ness that is being spoofed needs the infor­ma­tion to safe­guard them (which is a lie).

A legit­i­mate busi­ness does not attempt to sell prod­ucts or ser­vices by pre­tend­ing to be the author­i­ties. This “offer” is a scam, and we won­der whether the promised ser­vice (which sup­pos­ed­ly includes a “cer­tifi­cate of com­pli­ance” and a “ser­i­al num­ber”) will even be pro­vid­ed to the peo­ple who send checks or mon­ey orders for $295 to the sixth floor of Wells Far­go Plaza in Tacoma.

We assume some­body with premis­es there is oper­at­ing a vir­tu­al office or mail for­ward­ing busi­ness of some kind, which the peo­ple behind these let­ters are using.

If you have received one of these let­ters and you remit­ted pay­ment along with the stub to the “Labor Stan­dards Com­pli­ance Office” believ­ing that you were respond­ing to a gov­ern­ment notice, please file a con­sumer com­plaint with the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office imme­di­ate­ly.

Sim­ply fol­low this link to the online form, or down­load this PDF and return it by mail. Pro­vide your con­tact infor­ma­tion and your sto­ry so that the Attor­ney Gen­er­al can inves­ti­gate this scam and ascer­tain who might be behind it.