Who sent this letter? How to check the sender in twenty minutes

You check the sender of a TCPA demand letter in four places: the corporate registry of the state on the letterhead, the sender's own domain typed by hand, the federal court record system PACER, and the state bar directory if a lawyer signed. Twenty minutes, no cost beyond a few cents on PACER, and at the end you know whether the sender exists, where it is, whether the people behind it have filed cases, and whether any lawyer named on the letter is licensed. None of that tells you whether the calls were made. Your own logs tell you that.

1. The corporate registry

Every state keeps a public register of the companies formed or registered there. Florida's is the Division of Corporations, searched at search.sunbiz.org. Other states call theirs a business entity search, usually on the Secretary of State's site. Search the exact name on the letterhead, including the LLC or Inc. suffix.

What the record shows: whether the entity is active, the date it was formed, its principal address, its registered agent, and the officers or managers on file. What it means: the sender is a real legal entity that can be served, sued and subpoenaed. What it does not mean: that the claim is good or bad. A registered company can send a weak letter; an unregistered one cannot send a strong one.

If the name is not in the state on the letterhead, try the state of the registered agent or the state where the person called lives. Entities formed in one state often register in others.

2. The domain

Type the domain from the letter into the browser yourself. Do not click a link in an email. A genuine sender has a site that says what it does, how to reach it, and usually how to respond to one of its letters. Check that the entity name on the site matches the letter and the registry. Then look up the domain's registration date in a WHOIS lookup; a domain registered last month is a signal, though not proof of anything on its own.

3. PACER

PACER is the public record of the federal courts, at pacer.uscourts.gov. It needs a free account and charges per page viewed, with small quarterly totals waived. Use the case locator to search by party name. Search the sender, and separately search any law firm or lawyer named in the letter.

Read the results carefully. TCPA suits are filed in the name of the person who was called, not the company that wrote the demand, so a sender with no cases under its own name may still have every unresolved matter end up in court under its clients' names. A law firm that appears as counsel in TCPA cases is a firm that files. A search by nature of suit for the TCPA in the relevant district shows how common these cases are, which is useful context on day one.

4. The bar directory

If a lawyer signed the letter, every state bar runs a public lawyer search. In Florida it is The Florida Bar's Find a Lawyer. Search the name and check the status is active and in good standing, and that the firm matches the letterhead. A letter signed by a company officer rather than a lawyer is normal for senders that are not law firms; the absence of a bar number is not a defect.

5. The address

Put the street address from the letter into a map. A registered agent's address is usually a service company, and that is fine; the principal address should be an office or a mail-handling address that exists. A residential address on a demand letter, or no address at all, is unusual. The other fraud signs are on is this TCPA demand letter real.

What the results mean together

After you know who they are

A verified sender does not make the claim right, and an awkward one does not make it wrong. What verification gives you is the confidence to engage in writing without wondering whether you are paying a fraud. The next step is to get your own house in order before you speak to anyone: before you call anyone.