Psst! Wanna buy a poster?

(FSB Magazine) -- Julie Bryan had owned her coffee shop in Raleigh for about a month when she started getting letters from the North Carolina Poster Service. They came in brown envelopes with official-looking emblems and informed Bryan that if she didn't purchase certain workplace posters - one requiring employee hand-washing, another listing state labor laws - she could face $1,700 in penalties.

"I thought, 'Oh, my God, I've got to get these,' " Bryan says. So she sent $150 for six posters. Bryan didn't realize that the North Carolina Poster Service was not a government agency but a private company. And she also didn't realize that the posters are available free from the state.

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The state attorney general ordered the North Carolina Poster Service - which operates under dozens of aliases, including the Mandatory Poster Agency - to refund all money it had received from business owners such as Bryan.

The company also faced $10,000 in fines and was barred from sending any more mailings that could be mistaken for government warnings.

The Lansing, Mich.-based company has received similar penalties from at least 14 states, but vice president Steven Fata says his firm has done nothing wrong, pointing out the copy in the company's fliers, which states that posters are available free.

"The only way a person could be confused about this would be if they did not read the flier," he says.

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