Oconee Co Rep pitches bill to crack down on scammers

Georgia's Secretary of State wants the state to take legislative action to stop scammers from targeting small businesses.

It is a problem we have been reporting on for more than a decade.

Small businesses receive letters that look official but aren’t.

"The filing fee was $150 and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s triple what it was last year,' Bill Byrd said.

He already had his checkbook out when he noticed the very fine print on what looked like an official looking letter.

The letter was not from Georgia Secretary of State at all. Instead, it was a third part offering to renew his business license for him for triple the actual $50 fee.

Channel 2 Action News reported on similar intentionally confusing letters to Georgia business owners in a story around this same time last year. Our first report on the problem was more than a decade ago.

The letters are technically legal.

Warnings from secretaries of state over the years haven't stopped the schemes, so when Channel 2 investigative reporter Justin Gray contacted Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger this time around, he offered a new solution.

A new regulation requiring the letters contain a warning at the top in large font announcing that they are not is in legislation proposed by Oconee County Republican Representative Marcus Wiedower (pictured above).

"This is not a government solicitation. We need to clean it up to make sure these scam artists don’t go after small business owners," Raffensperger said.

You can register your business yourself online for $50, a fraction of what the letters are trying to get you to pay.