How to Verify if a Business is Legitimate

Verifying that a business is legitimate is a fundamental step in any commercial relationship. Whether you are a consumer checking a contractor, a company onboarding a vendor, or a financial institution performing KYB (Know Your Business) compliance, you need to confirm that the entity you are dealing with is real, properly registered, and in good standing.

Fraudulent businesses, shell companies, and dissolved entities pose real risks:

• Contractual risk. A contract with a dissolved LLC may not be enforceable. You could be left without legal recourse if something goes wrong.
• Regulatory risk. Financial institutions that fail to verify business counterparties can face fines and penalties under AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and BSA (Bank Secrecy Act) regulations.
• Reputational risk. Partnering with or paying a fraudulent entity damages your credibility and can result in public embarrassment.
• Financial risk. Paying invoices to a company that does not legally exist — or whose status has been revoked — means you may never recover those funds.

Business verification is not just for large enterprises. Freelancers verifying a client, landlords checking a corporate tenant, and consumers researching a service provider all benefit from confirming that a business is properly registered.

The first step in verifying a business is to search for its record with the appropriate Secretary of State office. Every formally registered business — whether an LLC, corporation, or limited partnership — has a public filing with the state where it was formed.

To find the record:

1. Determine which state the business is registered in. This is often (but not always) the state where it operates. Many businesses incorporate in Delaware or Wyoming for legal and tax reasons.
2. Go to that state's Secretary of State business search tool. See our guide to looking up a business for links to each state's portal.
3. Search by the business name or filing number.

What to look for:

• Does a record exist? If you cannot find any record of the business in any state, that is a red flag. Legitimate businesses that operate as LLCs or corporations must be registered.
• Does the name match exactly? The legal name on file should match what the business represents to you. Small differences (like "LLC" vs "L.L.C.") are normal, but a completely different name is a concern.
• What is the filing number? Note this number — it uniquely identifies the entity and is useful for future reference.

Note: Sole proprietorships and general partnerships may not have Secretary of State filings, as they are not always required to register at the state level. However, they may have local business licenses or DBA ("Doing Business As") filings.

Once you find the business record, the most important field to check is the entity's status. This tells you whether the business is currently valid and authorized to operate.

Common status values and what they mean:

• Active — The entity is in good standing and authorized to conduct business. This is what you want to see.
• Inactive — The entity exists but is not currently active. This may be a temporary state or may indicate the business has ceased operations.
• Dissolved — The entity has been formally dissolved, either voluntarily by its owners or by court order. A dissolved entity is no longer a valid business.
• Administrative Dissolution / Revoked — The state has revoked the entity's status, usually for failing to file annual reports or pay required fees. This is a significant red flag — it means the business has not maintained its registration.
• Withdrawn — For foreign entities (businesses registered in another state), "withdrawn" means the entity has ended its authorization to do business in this state.

Example API response showing status:

{
  "name": "SUMMIT CONSULTING GROUP LLC",
  "state": "FL",
  "status": "Active",
  "filing_date": "2019-06-12",
  "filing_number": "L19000150234"
}

If the status is anything other than "Active" (or the equivalent in that state), proceed with caution. Ask the business to explain and provide evidence that they are reinstating their registration.

Every LLC and corporation is required to maintain a registered agent — a person or entity designated to receive legal documents (such as lawsuits, subpoenas, and official state correspondence) on behalf of the business.

The registered agent and their address are part of the public record. Checking this information tells you:

• The business has a valid point of legal contact. If the registered agent has resigned or the address is invalid, the state may administratively dissolve the entity.
• Whether a commercial agent service is used. Many legitimate businesses use professional registered agent services like CT Corporation, CSC Global, Registered Agents Inc., or Northwest Registered Agent. This is standard practice and not a red flag.
• The agent's address. If the registered agent address is a residential address and the business claims to be a large operation, that may warrant further investigation — though many small businesses legitimately use their owner's home address.

See our detailed guide on registered agents for more information on what registered agents do and how to interpret this data.

Example API response with registered agent data:

{
  "name": "SUMMIT CONSULTING GROUP LLC",
  "registered_agent": {
    "name": "Northwest Registered Agent LLC",
    "address": "8 The Green, Suite A, Dover, DE 19901"
  }
}

Many states include officer, director, or manager information in business entity records. This data helps you verify who actually controls the business.

What to check:

• Do the names match who you are dealing with? If someone claims to be the CEO or managing member of a company, their name should appear in the officer or manager list.
• How many officers are listed? A corporation typically has officers (President, Secretary, Treasurer) and directors. An LLC may list managers or managing members. A single-member LLC may list only one person.
• When was the information last updated? Officer data often comes from annual reports. If the last annual report was filed several years ago, the officer information may be outdated.

Limitations to be aware of:

• Not all states include officer data in their free public search. Some states (like Delaware) provide minimal information online and require paid reports for officer details.
• Officer data may only reflect what was reported at formation or at the last annual report. Interim changes may not be reflected.
• Some states only show the initial officers filed at incorporation and do not update them.

curl "https://api.filed.dev/v1/entity/fl-L19000150234" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer your_api_key"

{
  "id": "fl-L19000150234",
  "name": "SUMMIT CONSULTING GROUP LLC",
  "officers": [
    {
      "name": "Jane Martinez",
      "title": "Managing Member",
      "address": "456 Oak Ave, Tampa, FL 33602"
    }
  ]
}

The formation date and jurisdiction provide additional context for evaluating a business.

Formation date: This tells you when the entity was created. A business that claims to have been operating for 20 years but was incorporated last month is misrepresenting itself. Conversely, a very old formation date with consistent annual report filings suggests a stable, long-running operation.

Jurisdiction: This is the state (or country) where the business was originally formed. Many businesses incorporate in one state but operate in another. It is very common for businesses to incorporate in Delaware — even if they have no physical presence there — because of Delaware's well-established business court system and flexible corporate laws. Similarly, Wyoming is popular for LLCs due to its privacy protections and low fees.

If a business is registered as a "Foreign LLC" or "Foreign Corporation" in the state where it operates, that means it was originally formed in a different state and has registered to do business in this one. This is completely normal and not a red flag.

What could be a concern:

• A business formed very recently that claims a long operating history.
• A business formed in an unusual jurisdiction (like a foreign country) for a company that appears to be a domestic operation, without a clear business reason.
• Multiple entities with nearly identical names formed in quick succession — this can sometimes indicate shell company activity.

Most states require businesses to file annual or biennial reports to maintain their active status. The filing history tells you how consistently a business has maintained its registration.

Positive signals:

• Annual reports filed consistently every year since formation.
• Timely responses to state requirements (amendments, name changes filed promptly).
• Reinstatement after administrative dissolution, followed by consistent filings — businesses sometimes miss a filing deadline and are dissolved administratively, but quickly reinstate.

Negative signals:

• Multiple years of missed annual reports.
• Administrative dissolution that was never corrected.
• A pattern of dissolution and reinstatement.

In Florida, for example, annual reports are due by May 1 each year. If a Florida LLC's last annual report was filed in 2021, and it is now 2025, that entity has likely been administratively dissolved for failure to file.

Filing history is available through some state portals and through the Filed API. It provides a timeline of all documents filed with the state for that entity, including the original articles, annual reports, amendments, and any dissolution or reinstatement filings.

If you need to verify businesses regularly — whether for onboarding, compliance, or ongoing monitoring — manual searches do not scale. Each verification requires navigating a different state website, interpreting different data formats, and manually recording results.

The Filed API enables automated verification workflows:

# Verify a business exists and check its status
curl "https://api.filed.dev/v1/search?q=Summit+Consulting+Group&state=FL" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer your_api_key"

You can integrate this into your application to automatically:

• Verify business existence during customer onboarding.
• Check entity status before processing payments or extending credit.
• Monitor status changes for businesses in your portfolio.
• Flag entities that are dissolved, revoked, or have changed their registered agent.

For compliance teams, this means faster KYB checks with auditable results. For developers, it means a single API integration that covers all supported states instead of building and maintaining scrapers for each state website.

The API returns all the fields discussed in this guide — entity name, status, formation date, registered agent, officers, and filing history — in a consistent JSON format, regardless of which state the business is registered in.