Legal Question in Business Law in California

First, the company may be incorporated in another state, or even another country. In that case, it would have to be registered with the Secretary of State. I don't know what you mean by "Hoover's" - is this a directory of corporate names? It may have been incorporated fairly recently and thus the name not show up in privately-published directories, or you may have the spelling of the name wrong. Try finding it on the Secretary of State's Web site at www.ss.ca.gov (then go to the business portal and do a name search.

Now, as to the question of "illegality." Representing your business as being incorporated when it isn't is not in itself quite sufficient to constitute either civil or criminal fraud. It may be one element of fraud, but it takes more to be fraud upon which one could successfully sue or face prosecution.

In order for the person or company to be found liable to you for fraud, you would have to plead and prove, in addition to (1) a knowingly false assertion that the business was incorporated, that (2) the company or its operator intended you to rely on that false assertion; (3) that you did rely on it; (4) that your reliance was reasonable; (5) that you sustained damage (harm); and (6) that your harm was a consequence of your reliance on the falsely-asserted fact.

In other words, "no harm, no foul."

Using company checks to pay personal bills seems to be an entirely different issue than claiming to be incorporated when you aren't. What's the connection? The practice of commingling corporate and personal funds, etc. may subject the company owner to personal liability for corporate debts under the "alter ego" theory, so it's unwise, but not necessarily illegal in itself.

The measure of whether a check is "legal" would seem to be whether the person signing has the right to disburse funds from that account for this purpose, and whether there are sufficient funds so the check is paid.

If this doesn't help, you might try re-asking the question with more facts and perhaps a clearer explanation of hos what the company or its owner is doing affects you. Also, if you give me the exact full name directly (off LawGuru), I might be able to determine whether and where the business is incorporated.