Why Company Registry Data Isn’t Enough to Prevent Fraud in Business Verification

For many regulated B2B companies, verifying the legitimacy of a business customer begins—and often ends—with checking official registry data.

Company registries are an essential part of the Know Your Business (KYB) process, offering structured information about a business’s legal status, ownership, and registration history. But while this data usually satisfies regulatory obligations, it is not designed to detect fraud. The assumption that a registered company is automatically trustworthy is a costly one.

Let’s examine the luxury food producer scam from early in 2025 (Source: The Guardian). Fraudsters impersonated real businesses and created bogus buyer entities to place high-value orders. These businesses likely passed basic checks (name, registration), but deeper due diligence (like checking for online presence, phone/email legitimacy, domain age, etc.) could’ve flagged them. To summarize, registry data was likely valid or forged convincingly, but it didn't reflect true operational legitimacy.

In another scam story, Google filed a lawsuit against a network of individuals accused of creating thousands of fake businesses on Google Maps and Search. These listings—often for services like locksmiths or HVAC repair—were supported by fabricated reviews and contact details, giving them the appearance of legitimate operations. While not tied to official company registries, these entities mimicked real businesses convincingly enough to deceive users and collect their personal information. The case highlights a crucial gap: even when a business appears credible through surface-level data or online listings, without deeper checks into digital behavior, contact legitimacy, and domain activity, fraud can thrive undetected (Source: CBS News).

As financial institutions, neobanks, lenders, and payment processors work to strengthen their onboarding controls, there’s a growing recognition that registry checks alone aren’t enough. What’s missing is context—behavioral, digital, and reputational signals that indicate whether a business is what it claims to be. That’s where deep online due diligence becomes critical.

What is business verification, and what it misses

Business verification traditionally involves reviewing a company’s legal documentation and public registration data. This includes confirming its incorporation status, validating its business address, and identifying Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBOs). The process is fundamental to onboarding and risk assessment in financial services, and it forms the backbone of compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) regulations.

But while these checks confirm a business exists on paper, they don’t necessarily confirm that it’s operational, authentic, or safe to engage with. Registries do not evaluate a business’s digital behavior, financial health, or real-world activity. They offer a snapshot of structure, not of substance.

This gap creates an opportunity for bad actors. In countries with open registry systems—like the UK’s Companies House, Singapore, or most of the European Union’s countries—it’s relatively easy to obtain details about a business. While in most cases these details are used to verify the existence of a business or to investigate its structure for legitimate reasons, it is not impossible to use this type of information to commit fraud, such as impersonating a real business during a loan application and leveraging official data to gain trust and credibility. In other cases, fraudsters may register new entities using fake addresses or misleading descriptions to mask the true nature of their operations.

Deep online due diligence helps expose these tactics. It allows for an evaluation of whether individuals claiming to represent a business are connected to it in any verifiable way. It also helps determine whether a business truly operates in the sector it claims to be in—or whether it’s acting as a facade for other activities, such as money laundering, phishing schemes, or digital commerce abuse.

Where registry checks is key for structural confirmation, online due diligence offers a layer of behavioral and reputational insight that closes the gap between compliance and real risk management.

The hidden risks of relying solely on registries

Company registries are often seen as the bedrock of business verification—trusted, official sources that confirm the existence and structure of legal entities. But while they provide essential information for compliance, they were never designed to detect fraud. This foundational limitation exposes businesses to risks that registry checks alone can’t mitigate.

One of the most pressing concerns is data latency and incompleteness. Even in jurisdictions where updates are published frequently, registries often reflect changes with delays, such as new beneficial owners, changes of address, or company status modifications. For fast-moving onboarding decisions, especially in financial services, this creates blind spots.

In addition, the public and open nature of many registries makes them exploitable. Fraudsters don’t need to fabricate information from scratch—they can repurpose real data to create lookalike entities or impersonate existing ones. 

Shell companies are another challenge. Many are formally registered and appear fully compliant on paper, yet operate as empty vessels used to obscure true ownership or facilitate money laundering. Without further analysis, these entities easily pass through registry-based screening processes.

There’s also the issue of synthetic business identities—entities created using pieced-together data points that, while technically accurate in isolation, don’t form a coherent or verifiable business. These identities often go undetected when verification relies only on structural data like company name, VAT number, or incorporation date. 

For any organization concerned with the integrity of their business onboarding process, it’s essential to understand that registries offer surface-level validation, not deep risk insight. The real challenge lies in determining what lies beneath the official data—something registry checks alone cannot uncover. 

How deep online due diligence enhances KYB processes

Unlike registry data, which provides a static snapshot at a given time, deep online due diligence looks at the dynamic digital presence of a business. It’s a way to cross-validate what a company claims with how it behaves and appears across the web.

This type of due diligence relies on digital footprint analysis—a layered examination of how a business operates online, who it interacts with, and whether those signals form a coherent and trustworthy picture.

Key elements include:

Domain Metadata

• Who owns the domain?
• How long has it been active?
• Are there frequent DNS changes or anonymous registrations?

IP and Hosting History

• Is the website hosted in a high-risk jurisdiction?
• Has the IP address been associated with spam, fraud, or malicious activity?

Tech stack and website behavior

• Does the site use outdated or suspicious technologies?
• Is there evidence of legitimate infrastructure, like customer support widgets or checkout flows?

But digital footprints go far beyond technical signals. A legitimate business typically has a consistent and verifiable presence across platforms:

Google business profile

• Verified address
• User reviews
• Opening hours

Social media activity

• Coherent branding across platforms (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram)
• Recent posts or interactions
• Employee accounts tied to the business

Marketplaces and ads

• Is the business active on platforms like Amazon?
• Do they run digital ads—and if so, what are they selling?

Combined, these signals paint a much clearer picture of whether a business is real, operational, and trustworthy—or simply posing as one.

What can Domain Intelligence reveal about a business?

A website is often the first place a fraudster will try to build legitimacy, and the first place a risk team should start looking for signs of deception. But not all websites are created equal, and not all signals are visible at a glance.

Trustfull's Domain Intelligence takes a closer look at the infrastructure behind a business’s online presence. It helps assess whether a website reflects the operations of a legitimate company or serves as a digital mask for something else entirely. Some of the most telling indicators include:

• Domain age and ownership
  A recently registered domain linked to a supposedly long-standing business is a warning sign. So is a domain registered under a private proxy with no link to the business’s declared name or owners.
• SSL certificates and site security
  Missing or misconfigured certificates may point to hastily created sites, especially if paired with minimal content and limited navigation options.
• Registrant and contact patterns
  Recycled email addresses, mismatched registrant data, or use of the same details across unrelated domains often signal fraud rings or copycat operations.

More advanced fraud operations now use AI-generated websites to appear credible, complete with cloned layouts, placeholder reviews, and even fabricated e-commerce pages. These can be hard to spot through visual inspection alone. That’s why domain intelligence also looks at the broader ecosystem around the website, including:

• The presence (or absence) of the business on social media platforms
• Advertising activity tied to the domain (e.g., on Google or Meta networks)
• Listings or reviews on public directories or marketplaces
• Connections to other domains using the same infrastructure

One domain on its own may not tell the whole story, but when placed in context with metadata, behavior, and external visibility, it can reveal whether a business is truly what it claims to be.

Building a modern business verification stack

Fraudsters have adapted to traditional verification methods. Many now use legitimate-looking registry entries, polished websites, and fabricated contact details to pose as real businesses. To stay ahead, financial institutions and onboarding platforms are rethinking what effective business verification looks like. A modern KYB process isn’t just a checklist—it’s a multi-layered framework that balances regulatory requirements with behavioral and reputational intelligence.

At its foundation, the process still starts with company registry data; that means incorporation status, legal structure, and Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) mapping remain essential for compliance.

But that’s only the starting point. To uncover what standard checks often miss, verification needs to include:

• Deep online due diligence — analyzing digital behavior, online visibility, and public signals to determine whether a business is active and aligned with its declared purpose.
• Website screening — assessing technical and reputational aspects of a company’s website and online assets.
• Contact details' intelligence — validating the legitimacy of provided email addresses and phone numbers through identity matching and behavioral signals.

Each of these layers helps answer additional questions that registry data alone can’t: Does the business have an operational web presence? Is it engaging with customers online? Are the digital components of its identity consistent, or are they full of gaps and contradictions?

When all digital signals are analyzed together, they expose patterns that are difficult to fake and often invisible to registry-only systems.

Smarter business verification with Trustfull

Company registries will always have a place in KYB, but they’re only part of the picture. Fraud no longer hides behind obvious inconsistencies—it hides behind compliance. To counter this, verification needs to start earlier, go deeper, and rely on more than just what’s filed on paper. Digital behavior, online footprint, and metadata analysis all play a role in determining whether a business is real, active, and safe to engage with.

The next evolution of KYB will come not from faster registry access, but from smarter, layered intelligence. Find out how you can stay ahead of the curve, by talking to our fraud prevention experts.