Talbot Today

The phone rings, you pick it up, and the caller identifies himself as an officer of the court. He says you failed to report for jury duty and that a warrant is out for your arrest. You say you never received a notice. To clear it up, the caller says he’ll need some information for “verification purposes”-your birth date, social security number, maybe even a credit card number.

This is when you should hang up the phone. The Verdict… It’s a scam.

JURY DUTY SCAM:

This has been verified by the FBI (their link is also included below).
Please pass this on to everyone in your email address book.

It is spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call.

Most of us take those summons for jury duty seriously ..

a new and ominous kind of fraud has surfaced.

The caller claims to be a jury coordinator.

If you protest that you
never received a summons for jury duty,

the scammer asks you for your
Social Security number and date of birth

so he or she can verify the
information and cancel the arrest warrant.

Give out any of this information and bingo,

your identity was just stolen.
The fraud has been reported so far in 11 states,

including Oklahoma, Illinois, and Colorado ..

This (swindle) is particularly insidious
because they use intimidation over the phone

to try to bully people into giving information

by pretending they are with the court system.

The FBI and the Federal Court System

have issued nationwide alerts on their
web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.

Snopes site: says this is real fraud.
http://www.snopescom/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp

FBI site: warns about the fraud.
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june06/jury_scams060206.htm

Posted on December 7th, 2007 by Tilghman Guy
Filed under: General