JUSTICE 101

Beth · Sat May 19, 2007 12:47 am JURY DUTY SCAM

HOMER sent this one to me.

Most of us take the 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 has just been stolen.

The scam has been reported so far in 11 states. It is particularly insidious because the callers use intimidation over the phone to try to 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 web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.

This has been verified by Snopes.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp