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Monday, January 28, 2008

Jury Duty Scam

Identity Theft is such a problem these days. I have a friend who this happened to and it has been a real nightmare. It will literally be years before she gets her life back. She had to put an alarm system in her home. She has to be constantly on guard as she has a small child at home. We just cannot be too careful. And it really is better to be safe than sorry.

JURY DUTY SCAM :

This has been verified by the FBI & Snopes.com (their links are also included at the bottom of this email).

Please pass this on to everyone in your email address book.

It is spreading fast so be prepared should you get this call.

Most of us take those summons for jury duty seriously.

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 (swindle) 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.


Snopes site: says this is real fraud.

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

FBI site: warns about the fraud.
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june06/jury_scams060206.htm

13 comments:

my4kids said...

I've never heard of this one but we live in such a small town I actually know the people who work in the court office :) kinda takes that problem out for me anyway.

Sandy said...

Yep, the beauty of small towns....we hear about jury duty through the mail and then through the grapevine!

laurie said...

i can't believe that people still give out their social security numbers over the phone.

Unknown said...

That's a scary scam. I haven't had that one. However, when I get things that I can't tell if they're scam or not, like Wells Fargo when our loan was there, I call the place and talk to a person.

Debs said...

How scary is this. Thanks for posting this information.

Pam Aries said...

Whoaaaa! THat is a serious one! Here..we get summons in the mail! Altho, Small town or not...something could happen if you are not aware.

MamaGeek @ Works For Us said...

WOW. No way. How scary is that. And sad.

Hayden said...

They'll always be a step ahead of the grapevine. the only defense is to never provide information over the phone or internet, only confirm it.

If they are asking for your social security number, they should have it and be willing to tell you so you can confirm or deny. Another approach might be to ask them to tell you the last 4 digits of the social.

bottom line, don't share personal info with strangers.

Anonymous said...

Lovely. Of course it is happening in OK.

Now for compliment day. I am so glad I came across your blog. I love your pictures of Chloe and I love, love, love that you live in one of my favorite places. I appreciate your support and the knowledge (such as this jury scam) that you give on your blog! Thank you!

Anonymous said...

That is scary. So often we can get a call like that, and not have time to think before giving out information. Identity theft is scary. I think Lisa's idea is a good one to practice. Take the name of the person and find the number to the courts and call to talk to someone there. Even better to use a different phone in case your phone has been rerouted. You can't be too safe.

Jennifer @ Fruit of My Hands said...

Jury Duty *always* comes with a certified letter. They *always* serve you in person. Don't ask me how I know...

Unknown said...

I left you a little award on my place.

Anonymous said...

That is one I haven't heard before. I can see how easy it is to do though. Thanks for the heads up...and I hope they don't start doing that up here.