The General Services Administration (“GSA”) recently announced that it is investigating fraudulent activity on the government contractor registration site SAM.gov. If you are a government contractor and do not already know about this development, then chances are your company was not one of a “limited number” of registered entities that GSA has identified as victims of the fraudulent activity. The fraud reportedly involved a third-party changing the bank account information of SAM registrants that were targeted. This has alarmed many contractors who worry about the possibility of payments being diverted to bank accounts that are not their own. GSA has not told the public how many registrations were impacted but is advising all registrants to log into the SAM site to verify that their financial information has not been compromised.
Regardless of whether your company was impacted by the fraudulent activity, for any renewals of SAM registration after April 27, 2018, GSA is requiring submission of a signed and notarized letter identifying the Entity Administrator for the registration. This is an immediate step GSA has taken in response its investigation and may change in the coming months, but for now all contractors renewing registrations will have to meet this new burden. Instructions and templates for the notarized letter are available through the SAM.gov website.