Trademark scammer update
I finally tracked down contact information for the attorney the scammers claimed to have on their counsel, and sent him an email. He almost immediately got back to me:
Thank you for finding a way to alert me that someone is fraudulently using my name and California Bar number and claiming to be associated with me or that I work for them. I greatly appreciate it.
Unfortunately, whoever is behind this scam has used other trademark related entity names and contacted other members of the public like yourself claiming that this person works for me or that I work for him/her, which is false. I have previously notified the State Bar of California that someone is misusing my name and bar number.
I am in-house counsel for [redacted]. I have no clients other than [company]. I am not a trademark attorney, and I do not know what [scammer company] is. I am not, and I have never been, associated with [scammer].
Best regards,
[redacted]
Anyway, I’ve been in communication with this attorney and he seems to want to shut these fuckers down.
I also did a little more digging (stuff I should have done to begin with, but, y'know, I was under duress and given a ridiculously short deadline to act) and you’ll never guess what’s at the scammer’s physical location.
This company looks like it’s actually a better deal overall than what I’m currently paying for my forwarding service although really when my current subscription runs out I’ll probably just switch to a local USPS PO box, which feels way less problematic and probably more generally useful for my needs anyway.
Chances are this scam company isn’t even based in the US so there’s only so much that can be done about them, but I’ll try like hell to do my part to both get them shut down and to help inform others to prevent them from falling prey to scams like these.
Do I feel ashamed for falling for this scam? Of course. Am I going to fucking do something about it rather than wallowing in silent shame? Hell yeah.