A new report from CBS LA investigative reporter Ross Palombo raises a disturbing question: how many businesses registered with the state of California are not real at all?
According to Palombo’s investigation, more than 800 business registrations filed last year may have been fraudulent, with many of them tied to a form of identity theft that experts say is growing in a very specific direction. The targets, the report says, are often legal immigrants who once lived in the United States for school or work, then moved back to their home countries.
That detail is what makes this story feel especially unsettling. It is one thing to hear that criminals are stealing identities. It is another to hear that they may be picking people who are far away, less likely to notice quickly, and easier to exploit because their names, records, and Social Security numbers are still real.
Palombo’s reporting suggests this may not be a small glitch or a few bad filings slipping through the cracks. It looks more like a system that may be too easy to use, too lightly checked, and too inviting for people who know how to game it.
The Addresses Often Did Not Match The Businesses
The CBS LA report opened with a simple but effective test: go see whether the registered businesses actually appear to exist.
Palombo and his team visited addresses tied to filings for elder care facilities, construction companies, spas, transportation firms, and pharmacies. Again and again, what they found did not match what the state records suggested should be there.
One address tied to Andriusonis Kitchen & Bath in North Hills turned out to be a private home. The people living there, according to the report, had no idea what business Palombo was talking about.
Another address tied to registered builders brought more confusion. At one location, a person told the CBS LA team she had never heard of the company listed there. At other places, businesses that supposedly existed on paper seemed to lead nowhere real at all.
Palombo also described finding three separate businesses registered to one small Glendale apartment. In another case, multiple companies, including a delivery business, a transportation company, and a construction company, were all listed at the same address.
That pattern matters because fake business fraud often hides in plain sight. A filing looks official, the address is filled in, the company name sounds ordinary, and the record gets added to a government system. To someone skimming the paperwork, it can all look legitimate. But when a reporter starts knocking on doors, the whole thing starts to wobble.
A Real Man In The Netherlands Found His Name Attached To A Business
One of the most striking parts of Palombo’s report involved a man named Tomas Andriusonis, who lives outside Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
According to the investigation, someone used his identity to register Andriusonis Kitchen & Bath in California. But when Palombo tracked down the real Andriusonis, the man said he does not own a kitchen and bath company and has never worked in that field.
Palombo asked him directly whether he does kitchens or bathrooms, tile, or design work. The answer was simple: no.
That exchange says a lot with very few words. Here was a real person, with a real identity, living half a world away, suddenly connected to a California business he knew nothing about. That is not a clerical error people can shrug off. It is the kind of thing that can snowball into lawsuits, ruined credit, tax problems, and years of cleanup.
And in this case, it already had.
According to the CBS LA report, Bank of America filed suit against Andriusonis over more than $45,000 in charges he said he never made. He told Palombo he was stunned not only by the lawsuit itself, but by how easily someone had apparently been able to fake his documents and obtain credit in his name.
That reaction feels completely understandable. Most people assume there are layers of review before a business gets treated as real enough to open accounts or obtain financing. This report suggests that assumption may be far too generous.
Fraud Experts Say Former Legal Immigrants Are “Gold”
Palombo’s investigation relied heavily on David Maimon, a fraud investigator for SentiLink, a company that helps verify identities and reduce fraud risk for banks.
Maimon told CBS LA that he has identified what he sees as a new trend: criminals are using the identities of former legal immigrants who came to the U.S. temporarily, then returned home. These are real people with real identities and real Social Security numbers, which makes the fraud especially powerful.
Maimon described those identities as “gold” for criminals.
That is one of the most revealing lines in the whole report, because it explains why this type of fraud is so dangerous. A made-up identity can fall apart quickly under scrutiny. A real identity belonging to someone living overseas is much more useful. It can pass more checks, stay unnoticed longer, and support larger financial moves.
Maimon told Palombo that once someone has a business under another person’s name, “the limits are way higher” and criminals can go after bigger loans. That shifts the fraud from nuisance-level identity theft into something much more expensive and destructive.
And according to the investigator’s analysis of SentiLink data, that may have happened more than 800 times in Southern California last year alone.
That figure is only a small portion of the more than 3 million businesses registered in the state in 2025, but it still feels like a flashing warning light. Even if the number is a fraction of all filings, the harm done to the people caught in it can be enormous.
One Victim Said The Fraud “Ruined My Life”
Palombo’s report also featured another victim, a former Penn State student now living in Thailand, who said identity theft connected to a fake California construction company had wrecked her financial life.
According to the CBS LA investigation, she discovered 30 accounts tied to her name, with thousands of dollars in charges. Before the fraud, she said her credit score was around 800. Afterward, it had fallen to 419.
That kind of drop is not just a number on a screen. It can affect whether someone can rent an apartment, buy a car, get a loan, or even pass certain background checks. It can close doors before a person even realizes one of those doors exists.
The woman told Palombo that the fraud had “ruined” her life. That may sound dramatic to someone who has never dealt with identity theft, but cases like this show why victims use language that strong. The damage spreads outward fast, and it often takes much longer to fix than it did to create.
That is one reason this story hits harder than a normal fraud report. It is not about one fake website or one bad credit card charge. It is about official-looking business records creating a kind of false reality that banks, credit systems, and legal processes may treat as genuine.
Registering A Business Appeared To Be Surprisingly Easy
A major theme of Palombo’s report was just how simple the filing process appears to be.
The California Secretary of State’s website says registering a business is the first step toward stronger protection from identity theft and fraud. But CBS LA’s investigation raised real questions about how much front-end protection actually exists.
Palombo reported that his team started registering a test business with only a few clicks and a $70 fee. According to the report, there were no obvious questions asked and no visible verification required during that early part of the process.
That is a problem if true, and it is hard not to see why. A state filing system is supposed to create order and legitimacy. If it is easy enough for bad actors to use as a shortcut to fake legitimacy, then the filing process itself may be helping the fraud look more credible.
Maimon told Palombo that registration through the state makes these businesses seem real, and that appearance of legitimacy is part of what makes the scam so effective.
There is something especially frustrating about that. Victims are not just fighting a criminal. They may also be fighting paperwork, databases, and institutions that were supposed to provide structure but instead helped the fraud gain traction.
State Officials Would Not Fully Explain Their Safeguards
Palombo said California Secretary of State Shirley Weber declined to sit down for an interview about the problem.
According to the report, Weber’s office said state law requires the office to file business paperwork, but not to investigate whether a business is legitimate before filing it. The office also said it does use fraud prevention tools, but would not elaborate on what those tools are or how they work.
That response is revealing in its own way. It may be legally accurate, but it is unlikely to reassure victims whose names are being attached to fake companies.
There is a difference between saying “this is not technically our job” and proving that the system is doing enough to stop abuse. Palombo’s investigation makes it hard to feel confident that enough is being done on the front end.
The report also said that if someone believes their identity was used unlawfully to create a business, they can submit a form that becomes attached to the business record. But as Palombo pointed out, that is still a long way from actually having the record removed.
That sounds like one of those bureaucratic answers that may be true on paper while feeling almost useless in real life. If your name is tied to a fake company and the record stays up, the damage does not pause just because a form was attached.
Police Say The Broader Identity Theft Problem Is Huge
Palombo also spoke with Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Peter Hish, who works in the Fraud & Cyber Crimes Bureau.
Hish said this business registration fraud is only one piece of a much larger identity theft problem. In L.A. County alone, he said detectives saw 25,000 identity theft cases last year.
That number is staggering, and it helps explain why people in law enforcement sound so alarmed. Hish told CBS LA that he has seen victims become suicidal after identity theft destroys their finances and peace of mind.
That is one of the darkest details in the report, but it is important. Identity theft is often talked about like it is just a paperwork headache, a bad credit mess, or an annoying consumer problem. For some people, it becomes much more than that. It becomes crushing.
Palombo also showed how even people who are not the named identity victims can still be dragged into the mess. At one Glendale address, a woman had been receiving mail for YJ Pharmacy for months. She appeared confused and concerned, asking whether bad people were connected to it and what could happen to her.
Maimon told the reporter she was one of the victims too, just in a different way. That feels true. Even if someone’s identity is not stolen, having your home or mailbox tied to suspicious business activity is the kind of thing that can leave anyone rattled.
The Bigger Problem May Be How Little Fear Fraudsters Have
By the end of the report, one idea kept coming back: the fraud appears bold because the odds of being caught seem low.
Andriusonis told Palombo he was not even sure who to blame most. That confusion makes sense. The criminals are obviously guilty, but the report also paints a picture of a weak system, limited verification, and public offices unwilling to explain much about how they stop abuse.
Maimon said he believed the state could likely find far more than 10 suspicious businesses in a day if it really tried. That may be the most uncomfortable takeaway in the entire investigation.
Because if a news team and a fraud investigator can spot one questionable filing after another just by sampling records and checking addresses, then people will naturally wonder why the state is not catching more of them first.
Ross Palombo’s report does not suggest that all California business filings are suspect. Far from it. But it does suggest something serious: a system meant to register legitimate enterprise may also be offering criminals a very useful doorway.
And when that doorway opens onto real identities, real homes, real lawsuits, and real financial ruin, it stops looking like a technical weakness and starts looking like a public trust problem.
Ed spent his childhood in the backwoods of Maine, where harsh winters taught him the value of survival skills. With a background in bushcraft and off-grid living, Ed has honed his expertise in fire-making, hunting, and wild foraging. He writes from personal experience, sharing practical tips and hands-on techniques to thrive in any outdoor environment. Whether it’s primitive camping or full-scale survival, Ed’s advice is grounded in real-life challenges.
