In a new phone phishing “con” going around, a person calls you at home pretending to be a court official who threateningly says a warrant has been issued for your arrest because you didn’t show up for jury duty. The caller claims to be a jury coordinator, and if you say that you never received a summons for jury duty, you are asked for your Social Security number and date of birth so they can verify the information and cancel the arrest warrant. Sometimes you may even be asked for credit card numbers! The moment you give out any of this information, your identity has just been stolen!
The scam has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma, Illinois, and Colorado. This scam is particularly insidious because intimidation is used over the phone to bully people into giving up information by pretending they are calling from the court system in an official capacity.
The FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.
Remember, these attempts come in all forms, and continue to become more and more clever. To be safe, never give out personal information to anyone you don’t recognize over the phone or Internet for any reason. If the police or the courts really want to come after you, don’t worry, I’m sure they already have all the personal data they need.
Tags: arrest, con, court official, court system, fbi, fraud, identity theft, jury duty, phishing, police, scam, scheme, warrant
2 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Do another naked episode and you’ll get more viewers. Guarenteed.
It’s the truth.
that actually happened to me and was really freaky! especially since i had just served jury duty too! i knew something was fishy about it but gosh these people are really convincing (and scary) when they call. I offered to go down to the courthouse with my receipt. that shut them up really quickly. then I knew it was probably a scam!