Did I Buy a Fake Fishing License?

July 18, 2019

Question: I’ve heard that there’s been an issue with fraudulent websites selling California fishing licenses. I bought my license online earlier this year. I don’t remember what link I used, and now I’m worried that I might have bought a fake license! Should I take it to a California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) office to find out? (Chris)

Answer: Unfortunately, yes, CDFW has recently discovered several unscrupulous vendors who are “brokering” licenses illegally. To date, it appears these sites have been buying real licenses from CDFW on behalf of customers, but charging exorbitant “shipping fees” on top of the price of the license. If you bought a license from one of these sites, it may be that you received a real license, but were overcharged for it. That said – we can only vouch for the authenticity of items purchased directly from a CDFW office at https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/explore/organization/lrb, an authorized license sales agent at https://www.ca.wildlifelicense.com/internetsales/OutletSearch/FindOutlet, through our telephone sales agent at (800) 565-1458 or online through our Automated License Data System (ALDS) at https://www.ca.wildlifelicense.com/InternetSales. If you have a printer available, you can buy, print out, sign and carry a temporary license that is valid. If you buy and print out an annual license, the temporary license is good for one month and we will mail your annual license to you. Shorter term licenses such as one-day and two-day can also be printed directly from your computer after making your purchase through ALDS.

If you’re unsure about an online purchase you’ve made and want to confirm that your transaction resulted in the issuance of a valid license, please contact us at [email protected]. CDFW staff can look up your account in the online database using your GO ID.

Please note that the only authorized online sales sites for CDFW products are the CDFW website (www.wildlife.ca.gov) and ALDS (www.ca.wildlifelicense.com/InternetSales). If the URL doesn’t match one of those two, do not enter your credit card number or other personal information! Also, an authorized CDFW purchase will never require you to provide your social security number.

For more information about these fraudulent sites, and what you can do to protect yourself from identify theft and fraud, please see our news release at https://cdfgnews.wordpress.com/2019/07/08/cdfw-warns-anglers-and-hunters-about-bogus-license-sales-websites/.