SCAM ALERT: Fake Bill-Pay Sites Hiding in Your Search Results

The FTC just warned that when you search online to pay a bill — medical, utility, whatever — the top result might not be the real company at all. It might be an impersonator waiting to take your payment instead.

What’s Happening

Say you need to pay a bill — your electric company, a medical lab, whoever. You do what most of us do: search online for the company’s payment page. But some of the results you see, including ones near the very top, aren’t actually run by that company at all. They’re paid ads from a completely different business, made to look official.

Click through, and you land on a page that looks legitimate enough. You pay your bill, feel like you’ve handled it — except you just paid an impersonator instead of the real company. On top of that, these sites often tack on extra fees you never agreed to. And in some cases, your payment never actually reaches the company you owed, meaning you could still show up as “unpaid” on your real account.

This isn’t a hypothetical — the FTC has already taken action against a company called Doxo for allegedly doing exactly this, impersonating well-known names like AT&T, Spectrum, and Labcorp in search ads.

Red Flags

• The top search result is a labeled “Ad,” not the company’s actual verified website
• The web address doesn’t match the actual company name once you look closely
• Extra “convenience” or processing fees show up that you weren’t expecting
• The page looks close enough to official that it’s easy not to double-check

What To Do

Skip the search bar entirely when it’s time to pay a bill. Go straight to the payment link or number printed right on your actual paper or email bill — that’s always the safest route. If you can, pay by credit card rather than a bank transfer or debit card; credit cards give you real dispute rights if something goes wrong.

Already paid a site that turned out to be fake? See our What To Do page — Bank Impersonation section for what to do next, and report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

Run into one of these fake payment sites yourself? Tell us about it — it helps us track what’s currently making the rounds.