Googled 'Passport Renewal Online'? The Top Ad Could Charge You $148 for a Form That's Free.

If you’re about to renew a passport for a spring trip, don’t click the first thing Google shows you. According to a federal lawsuit filed last week, that top result may be a company charging $119 to $499 to hand you a form the government gives away.

Renewing straight with the State Department costs $130. That’s the whole bill.

The ad that looks like the passport office

On October 22 the FTC sued GovAssist LLC, Entry LLC and their owner, Scott Zuckerman. The complaint says their sites (GovAssist.com, Entry.com and IVS.us) routinely showed up as the top sponsored Google result when people typed “passport renewal online” or “how can I renew my passport.” The FTC says the ads used flag and passport images, the State Department’s own phrase “Renew Your Passport Online,” and an “IVS” badge on a .us address to look official.

They aren’t official. The State Department is the only place that issues passports.

The pricing, per the complaint, said “starting at $89.” The lowest real price was $119 plus $29 shipping, so $148. Tiers ran up to a $499 “Urgent Expediting” fee. The government’s own fee sat underneath in small gray print, paid separately. One tier was $169, a hair above the State Department’s $165 for a first-time passport. Easy to read as the same thing.

What $148 actually bought

Here’s the catch. The FTC says most customers never got a passport through these sites. People applying for a first passport got a partly filled-out application, which they still had to take to an in-person appointment and pay for again. Renewal customers still had to file their own renewal on the State Department site or mail it in. The State Department doesn’t let third parties submit online renewals at all.

Do the math on a renewal. The cheapest tier is $148, and you still owe the government its $130. That’s $278 for a $130 job, more than double.

The speed promises were worse. The sites sold delivery in 3 to 4 business days. The FTC says that’s faster than the State Department’s own fastest expedited service, which runs two to three weeks for an extra $60.

The FTC alleges the companies padded their Trustpilot rating with fake reviews, and that they collected at least $40 million from more than 300,000 people since October 2023. The complaint puts the average charge at $145. The commission voted 2-0 to sue. These are allegations, and a court will decide the case.

Do this instead

Type the address yourself. Online renewal happens at one place: opr.travel.state.gov. Check that the address ends in .gov, not .com, .us or .org. Skip anything labeled “Sponsored.”

If you already paid one of these sites, check what you got. A filled-out form means you haven’t applied. File the real renewal yourself today, because the clock on your trip didn’t start when you paid them.

Then call your card issuer and dispute the charge. The complaint says plenty of customers did exactly that once they figured it out. Report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov too.

Paying $148 extra for a trip is real money. Run it through our budget planner before you book. And if this all sounds familiar, it’s the same trick behind fake bank ads sitting above the real bank.

The detail

The FTC charged violations of the FTC Act, its Impersonation Rule, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which bars getting someone’s financial information through false statements. The case is in federal court in Puerto Rico. Zuckerman was already under a 2021 FTC order from an unrelated stalkerware case. The complaint says Trustpilot told the companies in May 2025 that it had removed abnormally high numbers of fake reviews.

How Candid Yak makes money. Some of the products we write about pay us if you apply or sign up through our links. That never changes our verdict, our rankings, or the numbers in this article. We call a bad deal a bad deal whether it pays us or not. Some brands shown in our comparison tools are placeholder examples while we finalize partner agreements, and we label them as such.