I warned about this scam once. Letters coming in the mail telling you that you have to pay $150 and at times even more to keep your corporation open. The scammers could simply get the businesses information on the Californian website. All the information was available. They somewhat copied the letter you are supposed to fill out each year and sent over 1 million of those to businesses.

According to "this article" (not available anymore), they made a whooping $1 million with that scheme. Note that if you have to send 1 million letters and that it cost you about 50 cents each, they really only made 500,000 dollars. Which isn't bad for a scam, but it is going to be hard for them to pay the government $1.2 million... out of thin air?!

Now what surprised me the most is that these people actually got sued by the State. Since I have seen those letters coming in from the beginning of having incorporated, I did not see that coming! But I'm glad that the governments do something about such scams.

Cut from the article:

Continuing his fight against "rip-off artists," Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. won a $1.2 million ruling against Gaston Muhammad, 42, and Ronna Green, 41, of Duluth, GA, who billed nearly a million California business owners $150 each for deceptive and unnecessary corporate minutes services.