By REBECCA RUTHERFORD
Los Alamos
For the Los Alamos Daily Post

Local businesses rely on their local, non-profit chambers of commerce to help them grow and build a thriving community. Unfortunately, this makes local chambers of commerce targets for scammers! Recently, I’ve seen reports coming out of other areas that their local chamber of commerce has been impersonated by scammers. It seems to be mostly back east so far, but it is good to be aware as it will likely make its way out here.

See example phishing email below, the subject of this was “The Riverton Chamber of Commerce”.

HiServiceplumbing,

Just following up to see if you’re interested in acquiring the 2025 Registrants/Member List for:

• The Riverton Chamber of Commerce
• Riverton, WY, USA, 2025

This list contains 1,000+ verified contacts, ideal for expanding your outreach and boosting networking efforts.

If you’d like to proceed, I’ll be happy to share the pricing and additional details.

Looking forward to your response.

Best regards,
winter
Business Executive

This is from an article posted on Riverton’s local news site.

As you can see, there is no link, this scam seems to depend on the user replying to the email. In other cases there have been links in the body of the email as well.

It’s an attempt to sell the user a list of “verified contacts” for outreach, etc. The local chamber of commerce is a non profit organization, and wouldn’t be trying to sell this kind of list to businesses, generally this kind of info is included with a chamber of commerce membership.

Multiple emails are associated with these scams, but as an example from the Livonia Chamber of Commerce, the email domain used was @communitychamber.online, which was created on April 13, 2025, and flagged as risky and unreliable. This particular scam also involved a clickable link in the body of the email, leadfocusdata.net, which appeared to be invalid, and may be attempting to spoof another real company.

If you are a chamber of commerce member and you receive anything like this, just delete and do not interact with it in any way.

BBB offers the following additional tips to avoid this scam:

• Be wary of unexpected emails that contain links or attachments. As always, do not click on links or open files in unfamiliar emails. Scammers are attempting to take your money, information or gain access to your devices.
• Don’t believe what you see. Just because an email looks real doesn’t mean it is. Scammers can fake anything from a company logo to the email address. BBB is often a target of impersonation scams as well.
• Check with the company directly. Use sources like BBB.org to find contact information and follow up with the pitch or request, and make sure you are talking to the real company.
• Be cautious of generic emails. Scammers try to cast a wide net by including little or no specific information in their fake emails. Always be wary of messages that seem overly general.
• Report scams to bbb.org/scamtracker.

If you are a local chamber of commerce member, stay safe online and don’t fall for these scams!

Editor’s note: Rebecca Rutherford works in information technology at Los Alamos National Laboratory.