Scammers came for my Kansas City small business. Don’t fall for this trick | Opinion

The day you file a trademark is the day you become a target.

I learned this the hard way. I am writing it down so the next Kansas City small business owner does not pay what I paid.

Six months ago, I decided to protect the brand name of the small business I was building from my home in Overland Park. I did what most people would do: I searched online for how to file a trademark. I found a clean, professional-looking service. I paid it to do the work.

Then the charges started hitting my accounts. About $105 first. Then $1,050. Then $800. Then $2,025. Then $1,503. Each one had a plausible-sounding explanation: “Comprehensive Trademark Search.” “Registration Certification Fee,” “Documents Attestation — $5 per state times 50 states.” “Notice of Publication.” “Registration Issuance Fee.” Each follow-up email came from a different first name in a different “department” of the same operation.

When I finally pulled up the actual U.S. Patent and Trademark Office public database and searched my own business name, nothing was there.

The company had never filed anything for me. It had attached my billing information to an unrelated Chinese handbag company’s trademark record and was invoicing me against it on the bet that I would never check.

Total damage: $5,483 across two cards. I called my bank’s fraud department. I filed five claims. I got the money back. And just days ago, the scam operation contacted me again, apparently trying to social-engineer its way back to legitimacy after the financial recovery cut into its bottom line.

Recently, I sat down at my own keyboard and filed the real trademark myself, directly through USPTO.gov

It took 20 minutes and $350.

Eighteen hours later, a second scam — a completely different operation — emailed me. It cited my real serial number, my real business name, my real email address, my real mailing address. The email congratulated me on my “approved” trademark and offered to “secure it at the state level” for $290, or nationally for $800. There was a button to pay.

Here is what I want every Kansas City area small business owner to know: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office publishes every new trademark filing publicly within minutes. Your name, business, email, phone number and mailing address become searchable instantly. Scammers monitor that database in real time. The day you file a legitimate trademark — or register an LLC — is the day you become a target.

The pattern is sophisticated. The websites look professional. The emails are warm and congratulatory. The pressure tactics are calibrated to feel just plausible enough to keep you paying.

Four things will keep you safe:

• The only website that registers federal trademarks is USPTO.gov
• Any internet address ending in .com, .org, or .us is not the government’s.
• After you pay the USPTO the $350 filing fee, the government will not ask you for more money for years. Any “fee,” “module,” or “deadline” arriving in the first months is fiction.
• If an email about your trademark is warm, urgent, or congratulatory, it is not from the government. The government sends dry formal notices with deadlines and legal citations.

When something feels off, pause. There is no legitimate trademark matter in the universe that requires you to pay within 60 minutes.

Most founders who get hit by this never talk about it. Embarrassment is part of how the operation keeps running. I am talking about it because the next Kansas City entrepreneur to fall for it does not deserve what I paid for.

The only way to break the pattern is to make it visible.

Robert Traister is an Overland Park resident and founder of a small business launching in June.