So we were just getting ready for lunch when a man came up to our front door.

He was handing out business cards and soliciting work tree trimming, landscaping, or doing yard maintenance.

“Hey, Boss, we’ll give you a good price,” he said.

In Kaaawa, we would get visits like this quite often. Over the years, I hired several people who first made unsolicited visits like this. Some turned out to be good workers, reliable, and honest. And the fact that he was out looking for work on Thanksgiving seemed to be to his credit.

I took his card, thanked him, and he left.

His business card lists two phone numbers, with the statement, “Bonded & Insured,” along with a license number.

I was going to just drop it in a drawer for possible future reference, but then I noticed the license number. It just didn’t look right.

So I quickly checked online with the Professional and Vocational Licensing database, and sure enough, the license number isn’t in a format used in Hawaii. When I searched, there’s no record of a license issued in the company name or the individual’s name. So apparently the licensed part is bogus, and likely the “bonded and insured” claim as well.

A bit of additional searching online found that a person with the same name, and a similar sounding company name, was fined twice (for a total of $1,600) by Oregon’s Construction Contractors Board several years ago.

So here’s a question: Should I just throw his card away and forget it? Does someone in my position have a responsibility to help protect others who might not know how easy it is to check out this kind of offer? Should I feel obliged to become an enforcement agent and forward his card to state regulators?

Any thoughts?