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General Category => Discover Seattle! => Topic started by: TehBorken on Mar 03 06 09:09

Title: Beware - Jury Duty scam
Post by: TehBorken on Mar 03 06 09:09
Supposedly true but I can't swear to it. Forwarded from a friend. [hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"]Jury Rigged - I checked with Snopes to verify authenticity....it is
true.

Most of us take those summonses 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 News.

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