CHEYENNE - Cash some checks, wire the money to a bank account and we'll give you a cut for your trouble.

People who followed those instructions in a random e-mail pitch a few years ago enabled scam artists to make off with more than $220,000 by forging Cheyenne city government checks.

Wyoming's incorporation laws also provided the crooks no small amount of help. Forming a limited liability company or corporation in Wyoming has long been a simple, inexpensive and - frustrating to law enforcement - potentially a very private matter. The scammers in the Cheyenne case laundered the stolen money using a Wyoming shell company they had created.

Starting Thursday, Wyoming will try to improve. New laws will take effect aimed at making it easier for authorities to track companies' owners and officers - and crack down on fraudulent shell companies.

"A day doesn't go by that we're not contacted by Interpol, FBI, Department of Justice, Postal Service, where they've got a complaint that money has been tracked back to Wyoming," Secretary of State Max Maxfield said. "They've come to Wyoming, and we've had no laws on the books to hold accountable corporate representatives that are in Wyoming."

Fighting money laundering has become a federal priority because of terrorism. A 2005 money laundering threat assessment by the Treasury Department singled out Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming for allowing companies secrecy options approaching those available offshore.

"While these mechanisms were devised to serve legitimate purposes," the report said, "they can also be used by money launderers to evade scrutiny."

Maxfield said Nevada and Delaware have begun to improve their laws. Now it's Wyoming turn.

Like other states, Wyoming has required companies' registered agents - designated points of contact for serving legal notice - to maintain up-to-date information about companies' owners and officers.

It has been easy for many registered agents to operate illegally outside Wyoming, however, and not file required reports with the state. The reason is Wyoming laws have made it difficult for the secretary of state to crack down on bad actors quickly and with significant penalties.

"They don't file their annual report. They have no intention of filing their annual report. So they would sit on our books, and use Wyoming's good name, anywhere from 12 to 18 months before we could go in and administratively dissolve them," said Karen Wheeler, director of the business compliance division in the secretary of state's office.

The new laws, passed by the Legislature last winter, will enable the secretary of state to dissolve within 60 days any company that hasn't filed required reports or doesn't have a registered agent in Wyoming. Also, intentionally filing false company information will now be a felony punishable by up to two years in prison.

Wyoming still allows some of the secrecy mentioned in the 2005 federal report. They include nominee shareholders and nominee directors, who can help hide information about a company and its assets by standing in for the real shareholders and directors on state-filed documents.

Even so, Maxfield is confident Wyoming will become less alluring to criminals.

"We're going to try to keep the balance of being business friendly with trying to reduce our fraud friendliness," Maxfield said.

Investigators tracking the Cheyenne city check fraud soon hit a dead end. People who were mailed the forged checks wired the money to a Wyoming bank account held by a Wyoming corporation that existed only on paper - and not much paper at that.

More than three years later, no one knows where the money went.

"The best we could do is tell you probably in Indonesia someplace," Cheyenne Police Chief Bob Fecht said.

Economic development has been the goal of Wyoming's simple and inexpensive business registration. Another sweetener: Wyoming has neither corporate nor individual income taxes.

Wyoming has recruited plenty of businesses all right - just not in any physical sense.

Thousands of corporations and LLCs have formed in Wyoming this decade. According to Wheeler, they include 215 entities set up by one man over the first four months of 2007.

"If we had 215 brand-new companies in Wyoming, we'd be booming," Wheeler said.

The companies shared a small office in Casper, where Wheeler said the only employee was a woman who forwarded the mail and phone messages to an out-of-state registered agent.

"There's no records for any of the companies there," Wheeler said.

Wheeler said some registered agents don't bother with a secretary. A drop box has worked fine.

Maxfield said registered agents after Jan. 1 will need to be in Wyoming and be able to provide accurate information about the companies they represent.

"For us, it seemed like a simple request: That if you are employed by a company, then you bill that company. You know who where are. You know who they are," Maxfield said.

"It didn't seem like it was rocket science to hold someone accountable."