WEASEL CHARGES SMALL BUSINESSES FOR FREE SAM REGISTRATION, CALLS IT A “MEMBERSHIP”

May 28, 2026 | The Less Formal Debriefing

One firm discovered the federal portal costs nothing. So it built a business on the fear that it doesn’t.

THE REGISTRATION QUEUE. The registration is free. Grifter found a way to charge for it anyway.

Grifter the Weasel does not consider this a scam. He considers it a service. The service is sending you an email that looks like SAM sent it. SAM did not send it. Grifter sent it. From a laptop. In a folding chair.

He has built an entire business on the gap between what SAM costs and what people will pay out of fear.

His desk is a card table with one official-looking rubber stamp and a printer that is always almost out of ink.

People want certainty. I sell certainty. The certainty that if they don’t pay me four hundred dollars by Friday, something bad and unspecified will happen to their registration. It won’t. But the email says it will, and the email has a seal on it. I made the seal.

He calls his clients “members.” They did not sign up for a membership.

HERE IS THE PART YOU SHOULD NOT WRITE DOWN

Grifter’s advice to other small businesses is to find the thing the government gives away for free and put a price tag on it.

“Registration is free. Renewal is free. The whole portal is free,” he says. “So you charge for the part where they don’t have to think. The fear is the product. The paperwork is just the wrapping.”

His pitch deck has one slide. It says “URGENT” in red. The second slide does not exist because the first slide already worked.

The numbers explain why he keeps the folding chair. Documented fake renewal notices have charged businesses more than 1,500 dollars for a service that costs nothing, with tidy pricing tiers like 699, 899, and 998. Grifter has all three memorized. He says the 998 “feels honest because it isn’t a round number.”

Real vendors hate him. Buyers can’t find him. And the businesses that pay him get exactly what they would have gotten for free, plus a receipt.

Editor’s Note: Mr. Grifter offered this reporter a complimentary “expedited verification” for forty dollars. The reporter already had verification. Mr. Grifter said that was the perfect time to buy more.

Marjorie Halvers covers the business of selling to SAM for The Less Formal Debriefing. She has now been invoiced twice by a weasel she never hired.

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