Shameless rip-offs aimed at newly founded companies are on the rise. In 2013, when we founded binsec, we received a payment request that was supposed to motivate us to pay for an entry in a register. When we founded binsec group GmbH in October 2019 the notary had already warned us that we would receive "fake invoices" for entries in the commercial register. My thought at the time was: yeah, yeah, we know that one...
On 15 November the Frankfurt registry court sent the correctly worded "request for costs" for the registration of a GmbH, amounting to 150€. On 29 November the company was entered in the commercial register at the Frankfurt registry court and the entry was published. The 29th of November was a Friday. By Tuesday there was not one but several brazen payment requests in the letterbox:
- a letter from HGR GmbH demanding 794.92€
for publishing the commercial register text and registering the HRB number (Download) - a letter from Deutsches Register für Handel demanding 351.05€
for the new registration of the commercial register text / publication fee (Download) - a letter from DZHR GmbH demanding 924.63€
for publishing the commercial register text and registering the HRB number (Download) - a letter from HRZ GmbH demanding 789.52€
for publishing a commercial register text plus registration costs (Download) - a letter from Handels Union Deutschland demanding 288.00€
for highlighting the company entry including premium access (p.a.) (Download)
Impudence. Handels Union Deutschland would like to have it as an annual subscription straight away and the DZHR GmbH wants almost 1,000€. Presumably these companies do not even exist:
Only one HGR GmbH is registered in Germany and it is based in Düsseldorf. According to the letter, however, the invoice comes from Berlin and the IBAN is Belgian.
The Deutsches Register für Handel does not even state a legal form, but it does give an account at Postbank.
The DZHR GmbH does have a legal form, but no address. In return it also has an account at Postbank. The website dzhr.info says nothing but "under maintenance". Before the GDPR (DSGVO) you could at least have pulled the whois entry for the domain.
The German register portal does not know of any HRZ GmbH at all. For a change, a Sparkasse Rhein-Maas account is used. The website hrz-online.de says, tellingly: "This page is currently under construction."
The Handels Union Deutschland even states a company, namely the Boncheck GmbH. The account is held at Sparkasse Herford. There actually is a website at www.handels-union.de. Its legal notice (Impressum) also names a Boncheck GmbH as responsible, represented by its managing director Tolga Akcay. And.. rather unusually.. the legal notice also directly names the law firm responsible: "Kanzlei Senol, attorney-at-law Ali Senol, Friedrichstraße 24, 33615 Bielefeld".
Which means that the first four letters are complete fakes, but with the last one you actually do get something for your money. And if you do accept the service of the "Handels Union Deutschland", i.e. the Boncheck GmbH, perhaps because you mistook it for the official register, you are also immediately told which law firm represents the Boncheck GmbH. Now that is service.