RALEIGH– Secretary of State Elaine F. Marshall is urging North Carolina businesses not to fall for a mailing prompting them to pay a $78 fee to get a “Certificate of Status” from the NC Secretary of State’s Office.

The Secretary of State’s Office has received reports that a Florida company, Filing Labor Compliance Department Services (FLCD), is mailing out a “2019 Certificate of Status Request” form to recently formed companies. The misleading mailing implies that business entities are required to obtain a “Certificate of Status”.

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N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall spoke Thursday evening at the Charlotte Business Journal’s International Trade Awards program at The Ritz-Carlton, where she received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

She says the American way of offer and counter offer doesn’t resonate in most cultures when the deal-making begins.

“That simply doesn’t cut it in international trade,” she says.

During her 21 years as secretary of state, Marshall has met often with international delegations, posed for many photos with foreign dignitaries and shared many meals with heads of state and corporate executives. Often, a trade delegation from a foreign nation will show those photos to leaders in their country to prove that the delegation was respected on their North Carolina visits, Marshall says.

“I know it is important for me to be there,” she says. Her staff estimates that she attends up to 50 international events each year. She’s already up to 45 for 2017, so it looks like this year will be above average for international contact.

“People want reliability,” she reiterates. “They want continuity.”

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You might not realize this, given some of the recent political bluster, but North Carolina has one of the best, if not the best, notary public programs in our nation.

Our great reputation is thanks to the high standards that aspiring notaries must meet, and to the cutting-edge notary public innovations we have developed in North Carolina. These efforts have earned significant recognition with the National Notary Association’s highest national Achievement Award and earlier this month the National Association of Secretaries of State Medallion Award for "outstanding leadership in business services and electronic governance issues.”

Recent breakthroughs in advancing how notaries public help businesses and the public include our “Find-A-Notary” search engine. It allows anyone using the web to locate the nearest notary public who has said they are available to serve walk-ins. Another advancement is our electronic notary or “eNotary” program—a 21st Century safe and secure way to notarize electronic documents moving at the speed of the internet itself. Details of these programs can be found in the Notary section of sosnc.gov.

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