Warning: "Singapore Company Register" is bogus

[jpatokal]

Got a official-looking letter today titled "VERIFICATION OF INFOMRATION" from an outfit calling itself the "Singapore Company Register", requiring me to "verify" information in their database and making vague threats about having to respond in one week. The letter style is carbon copied from Singapore government communications, but it's a private company (the back of the envelope has "Pte Ltd" in tiny letters, but the UIN is not mentioned anywhere, even though I believe that by law it has to be...) and you have zero obligation to reply. If you do, apparently they have the cheek to charge $490 for "registration"!

Singapore's actual company registrar ACRA has issued an alert about them and it's even made the news. Contact details per their own website, which I will not dignify with a link:

DATA REGISTER PTE. LTD.
10 Anson Road #24-09 International Plaza, Singapore 079903
201327463M

[Max Headroom]

Old chestnut trick that still works, because the evil-doers send 20,000 of these, or more, and there's at least a few hundred bean-counters receiving this too busy with more pressing matters, so instead of checking for validity, they transfer the amount noted in these bogus invoices. Ka-chingg! Goodbye moolah.

[JR8]

I Googled the address and it's the registered office for a load of companies. Pages of them.

Turns out it's a 'virtual office'. An address with mail-forwarding.
http://www.ewiim.com/virtual_office.html

[proxymoron]

Me too get one letter from them addressing to my company. They got me for couple of minutes until I figured out that there was no contact information (like official website or direct line). Its quite interesting to see what people can do from an online database like ACRA.