Category: News and Views
Most of us take those summons for jury duty
seriously, but enough people
skip out on their civic duty, that a new and
ominous kind of scam has
surfaced. Fall for it and your identity could be
stolen, reports CBS.
In this con, someone calls 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.
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. Sometimes they even
ask for credit card numbers. Give out any of this
information and bingo!
Your identity just got stolen.
The scam has been reported so far in 11 states,
including Oklahoma,
Illinois, and Colorado. This (scam) is
particularly insidious because they
use intimidation over the phone to try and bully
people into giving
information by pretending they're with the court
system.
The FBI and the federal court system have issued
nationwide alerts on their
websites, warning consumers about the fraud.
Check it out here:
http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp
Yeah that's not good at all. There are a lot of vulnerable people out there who might be intimidated into giving up sensative information like that.