# General Business Category > Scam Alert Forum >  A scam that is actually a marketing ploy?

## wynn

I don't know how many of you receive 'Pete's Weekly' but the latest is here.

PetesWeekly.com 
Business Owner Tactics 

A New Government Scam? 
May 20, 2015 

Government letterheads are not designed to be pretty. They do not have to be. When we get a letter from our Govt we are tempted to intense anxiety before retiring to change our briefs. Government is not known for frivolous missives. 

This means that when you receive one from the Dept of Justice telling you boldly about the imminent "Removal of your company details" you take instant action. 

That logo looks the same as the last Govt letter you received, and that was not good news either. The style is best described as unjovial. 

You also know that no South African in his right mind will try to forge a Govt letterhead. The thought of a few years in Pollsmoor tends to put one off. 

This does not stop a German company from sending out letters that look just like Dept of Justice communiques. Thousands of them. The threat of a few years in the hotels that pass for German prisons must sound like a holiday to hard-working German scamps. 

Bottom line: do not respond to a letter from anyone, even the Department of Justice, about the "Removal of your company details". It is a scam, but not by the SA Government. 

Actually, the only crowd in SA that can remove your details from anything is the team at CIPC. They do not want you get into a flap while they deregister your firm so they do not warn you. I am sure that their intentions are sincere. 

What thousands of South Africans are facing is a German scam which looks very much like a government directive. It has been going on since 2009 in about 20 countries. (I list below the ones I have found.) Yet there seems to have been almost no action taken against the firm. 

Each person who is burned by the people hiding behind TVV Tele Verzeichnis Verlag GmbH assumes that they alone are stupid to have been had. Not so. These guys write letters that look just like the real thing you might get from the UK Department of Trade, or the Norwegian Government or the SA Department of Justice. The letters are marketing genius, albeit on the wrong side of what the rest of us call ethical. But maybe not. 

You might think that each target country might instruct their local German consulates to make known to their hosts their slight concern. It seems not. 

It turns out that this letter is viewed as a normal request to do business even if it is slightly racy, what with a SA govt logo and all. 

Want to know how they do it, and how many countries they have hit so far? Read it all here. 
https://vl219.infusionsoft.com/app/l...49c21a5c82b853

Please share this because more folk are getting hurt every day. 

Warm regards. 

Peter Carruthers

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Mike C (20-May-15)

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## Mike C

Yep - received one from them yesterday.

Looks very official and no mention is made of payment except in the fine print right at the bottom of the second page.  If you sign it and send it off you are liable for over R9000.00

Ours got shredded pretty quickly.

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