Most
people take a court summons for jury duty seriously, but enough
people skip out on their civic duty, that 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 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.
