Today I received an e-mail from Ken Deshaies, who got it from a deacon at his church about jury duty scams and it is worth a read.
Have you ever had a summons for jury duty well it seems hard to believe but 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 to bully people into giving in
formation by pretending they're with the court system. The FBI and the
federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites,
warning consumers about the fraud. The sites listed below contain additional
inofrmation.
Check it out here:
<http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp>
http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp
<http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel05/092805.htm>
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel05/092805.htm
<http://www.scambusters.org/juryduty.html>
http://www.scambusters.org/juryduty.html
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