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Fraudsters Assuming Identities of Lapsed Business Entities: Researchers

Fraudsters are usurping identities of long-established, inactive businesses by exploiting vulnerabilities in states' reinstatement processes for lapsed company registrations, analysts told ACAMS moneylaundering.com. Reinstatement allows companies to recover their registration after mistakenly allowing annual fees to lapse—a common occurrence for small businesses, said John Chang, chief of staff at SentiLink, an identity fraud research service in San Francisco. But some state registries fail to verify the legitimacy of reinstatement requests, making them vulnerable to imposters. Chang posted a blog on Sentilink's website on July 24 describing the results of his research, which reviewed reinstatement processes at 50 Department of State...

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