The envelope is the part that gets people.
It is plain white. Often there is no return address. It is addressed to your business by name, and it says something about an annual statement or a filing that is past due. Near the top there is a deadline in bold. Under that, a paragraph about penalties for noncompliance. At the bottom, a QR code.
Most small businesses around here have spent the last few years training staff to be suspicious of email. Nobody trained the person who opens the mail. That is the gap this scam is built for.
What the letter is actually asking for
The letter tells you your LLC or corporation has a filing obligation and that you are behind on it. It gives you a date to respond by. It may cite state statutes or federal filing rules, and it will usually mention fines if you ignore it.
Then it hands you a way to pay. A QR code, a phone number, or a website.
Michigan's Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs warned about this pattern in June 2025, when mailings went out from an entity calling itself New Business Filing LLC. The department's point was blunt: the solicitation implies your business must complete an annual statement whether or not you have already filed one.
That last part is why it works. LLCs in Michigan really do file annual statements. The obligation is real. It just is not owed to the company that sent you the letter.
The QR code is the dangerous part
A link in an email can be hovered over. You can see where it goes before you click. A QR code cannot be inspected. You point a phone at it and the phone decides your destination.
The FTC has described where letters like this lead: a website that asks for your business license number, your Social Security number, your EIN, and a credit card. That is not a filing. That is a harvest. Those identifiers are enough to open credit, file a return, or impersonate your company to a bank.
The FTC's advice is short and worth repeating to whoever handles your mail. Do not use any website or phone number printed in the letter. Look the agency up yourself.
How to tell the difference
Real notices from the state of Michigan come from LARA's Corporations, Securities, and Commercial Licensing Bureau, and they are mailed to the resident agent at the registered office on record. If the letter landed on the shop floor instead of with your resident agent, that is a signal.
Second signal: the fine print. Many of these mailings do carry a disclosure that they are not a government agency. The National Association of Secretaries of State notes the language is usually present but buried under the seals, the deadline, and the warnings. Read the smallest text on the page before you read anything else.
Third: the payment path. A state filing fee does not route through a private company's QR code.
In June 2026, the Michigan Attorney General's office reached an agreement with a company over mailings that pitched a workplace safety manual to newly formed businesses. The mailer carried a respond-by date and referenced criminal and civil penalties. Under the agreement, that company must now include a line in every solicitation: "This is not a bill. This is a solicitation; you are under no obligation to pay the amount stated, unless you accept this offer."
That sentence is the whole test. Read it as if it were printed on every official-looking envelope you open.
What to do this week
Pick the person who opens your mail and give them one rule. Nothing that arrives with a deadline and a QR code gets scanned or paid. It goes to you or your bookkeeper, and somebody verifies it by typing michigan.gov into a browser themselves.
Then check your own standing once, so you know what a real notice looks like. Search your business on the state registry, confirm your resident agent address is current, and find out when your next filing is actually due. A few minutes now beats an argument with a bank later.
If you do get one of these letters, keep the envelope. The Attorney General's consumer protection team takes these reports, and so does the postal inspection service. A paper trail is what turns a nuisance into a case.
The pattern behind it
Strip away the paper and this is the same trick as every phishing email you have already warned your staff about. Authority, a deadline, a consequence, and one convenient way to comply.
The delivery method changed. The training did not.
The fix is not complicated. It costs one conversation with the person who sorts the mail. If you would rather have somebody look at how notices and payments actually flow through your business before the next one arrives, that is a conversation we are happy to have.