Amid legislation stalls, registered agent sites generate millions in state revenue, fraud continues

SHERIDAN — A 4,125 square-foot office building one block from Sheridan’s Main Street made Wyoming more than $21 million in revenue in just over a year.

This building, at 30 N. Gould St., is home to 26 commercial registered agents representing close to 300,000 of Wyoming’s 830,000 limited liability companies. Every year, the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office collects about $100 in registration costs for every new LLC and $60 per business every year it renews its status. 

The money adds up.

Being a registered agent — and having a Wyoming LLC — is a completely legal and legitimate business model. 

Starting an LLC with a registered agent at a physical Wyoming address allows companies to use Wyoming’s tax structure and privacy laws without physically residing in the state. Wyoming statute does not require registered agents to know much beyond basic contact information for companies represented. 

As referenced in previous reporting by The Sheridan Press, this system creates a loophole where individuals can set up shop to conduct scamming operations and shell companies with a Wyoming address.

Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray said Wyoming collected $50.5 million from 675,000 LLC filings in 2024. Those numbers jumped in one year to 830,000 filings generating $59.6 million in revenue for the state’s general fund in 2025. 

Registered agent sites in Sheridan have seen a special amount of growth, with Sen. Barry Crago, R-Buffalo, calling Sheridan “the epicenter of LLC filings” during the 2026 state legislative session. In 2025, 129,075 companies used a registered agent based out of Sheridan’s most popular commercial registered agent sites — 30 N. Gould St., 1309 Coffeen Ave and 1095 Sugar View Drive, Suite 500.  Together, these three Sheridan sites generated more than $23 million in state revenue in 2025.

The filings correlate to another kind of activity: slews of subpoenas and court summonings, an increase in local fraud cases and hundreds of complaint calls to offices like the Sheridan County Chamber of Commerce. 

Local constraints

Sheridan County Sheriff’s Office deputies are frequent visitors of the 30 N. Gould and 1309 Coffeen offices. In 2025, deputies served formal legal documents 76 times to 30 N. Gould and 25 times to 1309 Coffeen Ave.

Lt. Doug Sanders, undersheriff for the Sheridan County Sheriff’s Office, said 30 N. Gould St. is one of the most common places deputies routinely go to because of the sheer number of businesses based there.

At the sheriff’s office, Sanders said a part-time process server and the rest of the patrol staff are tasked with serving legal process to individuals and businesses.

The deputy first knocks on the door and is let in by a staff member for the commercial registered agent companies.

“I let them know I’m there to serve a paper, and I just tell them what the business name is. They’ll verify it on their computer and say, ‘Yep, they’re one of ours,’” Sanders explained. “They’ll accept the service, and I will give them the form. We keep a sheet that is on the front stapled on by our secretary… that basically documents the date, time and location for the paper service.”

Sanders said the process is fairly simple. He said the only issue they run into is if a business does not want to accept the service, which is why they always record the name of the employee who accepts it.

Whitney Ward, director of public relations with one of 30 N. Gould St.’s registered agent companies, Registered Agents Inc, said the company’s employees scan and upload the documents to a client’s online account after they receive service.

“If a client has not accessed the documents, we follow up through multiple channels — including phone and mail — to ensure they are aware of the time-sensitive materials,” Ward said, adding that each client can access their legal documents within an average of 10 minutes.

“Fraud remains important to Registered Agents Inc amid evolving regulations aimed to combat fraudulent activities. We take every measure required of us in the Wyoming state statute and regularly assist state and local law enforcement in their efforts as well,” Ward said.

In 2025, the SCSO served 13 subpoenas, 14 continuing garnishments, four notices and 70 summons and complaints to commercial registered agent sites at 30 N. Gould St. and 1309 Coffeen Ave.

The most common of these, a summons and complaint, notifies a business it is being sued. The complaint details why. This paperwork kickstarts the legal process for a lawsuit.

But an official complaint is not the only kind of complaint Sheridan County offices receive. 

Stephen Dow, office resource specialist at the Sheridan County Chamber of Commerce, answers up to three or four calls a day from people who have been scammed. But correspondence is sporadic — sometimes he can go a week or more without hearing from anyone.

The situations vary. According to call logs from the Sheridan County Chamber of Commerce, customers who fear they have been scammed are often based all over the U.S. Some of these calls are more serious than a simple scam or a faulty product.

“Other calls are longer because we’re dealing with people who have often been scammed out of hundreds or thousands of dollars and just need someone to talk to,” Dow said. “When they need that, I try to provide that while also hopefully pushing them toward some useful resources.”

In November 2025, this happened to a 15-year-old from Pennsylvania, according to a call log provided to The Press by the Chamber. 

After purchasing an item from a business called Nimora, registered at 30 N. Gould St., the individual claimed the item never arrived and the company began repeatedly making charges to the credit card that it needed to be shut down. 

In another scam October 2025, a caller attended a presentation by Apricorn LLC, also 30 N. Gould Street, and considered investing more than $5,000 with this company. The Chamber told him to exercise caution.

Many fraud stories end with unsolved answers and little closure. 

At the Sheridan Police Department, close to 42% of all fraud cases reported in the past year were related to 30 N. Gould St. and 1309 Coffeen Ave. 

SPD Capt. Tom Ringley said there’s little his department can do.

“There are no regulations that mandate the registered agent check the validity of the business using them,” Ringley said. “So often there are no leads for us to pursue, and almost always, none of the involved parties are in our jurisdiction.”

Ringley said the SPD does not have leads for “a vast majority” of fraud cases. After the report is documented, it refers the individual to the FBI or the Better Business Bureau.

“We’ve worked with area FBI agents to contact these people and find out what we can do,” Ringley said. “But ultimately, these businesses are working within the parameters of statutes, and until there’s a change in statute, things will obviously carry on as they happen.”

Statewide stalls

Several pieces of proposed legislation would change these statues but were not signed into law.

Senate File 55, which did not make it through the legislative process in 2025, would have required commercial registered agents who filed 10 or more documents with the secretary of state in one year must verify its identity through a state-issued driver’s license or identification card. 

Most recently, Crago sponsored Senate File 82 – “Duties of registered agents-amendments” in the 2026 legislative session. The bill would have required registered agents to retain the names and addresses of each entity’s owners, unless the entity has more than 100 owners or maintains a fixed, physical business location in the state. Additional information about business owners could be audited by the secretary of state’s office and used by law enforcement in criminal investigations. The bill died in the House on March 3.

It’s not Crago’s first attempt to pass stricter legislation for registered agents. In 2024, he sponsored House Bill 98, requiring LLCs to report beneficial owners to their registered agent. It was not considered for introduction.

While Crago would have liked Senate File 82 to become law this year, he told The Sheridan Press it ultimately achieved its broader goal.

“I’m not terribly disappointed, because the bill really did what it was supposed to do, which is open some eyes and some ears and get people talking and thinking,” Crago said.

During the session, Gray believed this bill would have decreased business filings by as much as 35-40%, decreasing Wyoming’s revenue by $23.8 million.

This number closely resembles the $23 million the state collects every year from Sheridan’s three commercial registered agent sites. But Gray did not respond to requests for comment regarding how he calculated this estimated loss, and whether he expects the largest decrease to be the loss of LLCs at 30 N. Gould Street and 1309 Coffeen Ave.

This revenue, Gray said, goes into Wyoming’s general fund, which supports Wyoming’s education, health care systems, public safety, government, water, energy and economic development. The secretary of state’s office did not provide a more detailed account regarding how this money is expended. 

Despite stalling legislative movement, the secretary of state’s office did conduct 49 in-person audits at 30 N. Gould St. and 1309 Coffeen Ave. in 2025. The secretary of state’s office kept these records confidential under Wyoming Statute 17-28-108, which keeps certain documents connected to LLCs confidential until the event of a criminal investigation or court-ordered subpoena.

Updated legislation from 2025 also resulted in the removal of nine fraudulent businesses in Wyoming.

Senate File 56, which was signed into law by Gov. Mark Gordon on Feb. 28, 2025, allows the secretary of state’s office to dissolve businesses that have provided false or fraudulent information to a registered agent. The secretary of state can determine this through an examination of records or if he is notified of this incorrect information by the LLC’s registered agent. 

In 2025, the secretary of state dissolved three LLCs  from 30 N. Gould St., one from 1309 Coffeen Ave., two from 1095 Sugar View Drive in Sheridan and three from 159 N. Wolcott St. Ste. 133 in Casper. According to documents provided by the secretary of state’s office, many of these companies were dissolved because they used names without authorization.

Gray said the dissolutions were conducted in accordance with Wyoming law, but he did not specify the exact process his office takes to discover and dissolve fraudulent businesses. The Reporting Business Filing Fraud page on the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office said the administrative dissolution process begins when a fraudulent filing is filed and “when it has been deemed to be in the public interest.” 

“I am disappointed that the Wyoming Legislature chose not to pursue multiple bills that were filed in the legislature to attack fraud, which would have provided our office even more tools to take on business fraud,” Gray said in a statement to The Press. “However, we will continue to work during the interim on enhancing our office’s ability to combat business fraud, and will also continue working with the tools and resources we have to make sure commercial registered agents are following existing Wyoming law.”

What is a registered agent?

The Wyoming Limited Liability Company Act outlines the terms and regulations imposed on LLCs. Registered agents are a legal liaison and contact point for an LLC, acting as its official address for all legal documents, state filings and government notices.  P.J. Burns, regional director of the Wyoming Small Business Development Center Network, said registered agents can be business owners themselves, an attorney or a commercial company — like many of the companies that operate out of 30 N. Gould Street in Sheridan.

30 N Gould St. is home to several commercial registered agent businesses. The state of Wyoming Secretary of State Business Division lists several commercial registered agent businesses under the 30 N. Gould St. location, including Registered Agents Inc, Registered Agent Services LLC, Registered Agent Warrior LLC, Business Anywhere, Wyoming Nexus LLC and Best Wyoming Registered Agent.

“We understand there’s local concern around how 30 N. Gould is used and the confusion it can create for community members,” a spokesperson for Registered Agents Inc said in an August 2025 statement to The Press. “What’s sometimes lost in the conversation is that this setup isn’t unique to Sheridan, it’s a common and legal structure used in nearly every single state that markets itself as business-friendly.”

After the papers are served, the deputy who delivered them signs the original and brings the information back to the sheriff’s office for recording and documentation.

What is an LLC? 

 A limited liability company allows companies to separate personal assets from business debts and lawsuits. This system gives business owners the flexibility to have multiple members and set unique profit distribution rules between owners. LLC owners also have pass-through taxation, meaning the business is taxed at the individual level instead of the corporate level. In a state with no income or corporate taxes, like Wyoming, this can be advantageous for some companies.

Registering an LLC in Wyoming requires developing a business name, finding a registered agent and filing the Articles of Organization through the Wyoming Secretary of State’s office. The registered agent’s name, contact information and location must be listed on this paperwork, but not the business owner’s addresses or contact information.

Wyoming charges a one-time filing fee of $100 plus processing fees. Annual report fees start at $60 and increase based on the LLC’s assets.

“Usually we have multiple papers, it’s not just one that we’re going to serve,” Sanders said.