posted 02-13-2006 09:45 AM         

The scammer calls claiming to work for the local court and claims you've failed to report for jury duty. He tells you that a warrant has been issued for your arrest.

The victim will often rightly claim they never received the jury duty notification. The scammer then asks the victim for confidential information for "verification" purposes.

Specifically, the scammer asks for the victim's Social Security number, birth date, and sometimes even for credit card numbers and other private information — exactly what the scammer needs to commit identity theft.

So far, this jury duty scam has been reported in Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington state.

It's easy to see why this works. The victim is clearly caught off guard, and is understandably upset at the prospect of a warrant being issued for his or her arrest. So, the victim is much less likely to be vigilant about protecting their confidential information.

In reality, court workers will never call you to ask for social security numbers and other private information. In fact, most courts follow up via snail mail and rarely, if ever, call prospective jurors.

Action: Never give out your Social Security number, credit card numbers or other personal confidential information when you receive a telephone call.

This jury duty scam is the latest in a series of identity theft scams where scammers use the phone to try to get people to reveal their Social Security number, credit card numbers or other personal confidential information.

It doesn't matter *why* they are calling — all the reasons are just different variants of the same scam.

posted 02-14-2006 07:31 AM         

therefore, we are to conclude that anything that Ty-K posts from this point forward is absolute gospel
(No pressure there!)

Of course this would be contrary to any commment by AC.

The thing with most scams is use common sense and think.

1) Getting a summons for jury duty has nothing to do with your phone number so unless they would look up each and everyone (don't see a government worker doing that), that should tip you off.

2) Any summons I got has nothing to do with my SS or DL # so I'd be curious as to what they are comparing it to;

3) With all the millions issued daily, and all those that don't show up, can you imagine how big that department would have to be?

4) Ask them things they should know like what is the address it is showing for you, how does it list your full name (do they even know it?). If they have the summons info, they should have that right in front of them;

5) Ask them for information about them. What department do they work in? What is the phone number there? What is the main number? Then, tell them you are busy but, you will call their work number in a few minutes.

6) Trip them up - ask them if Bob Crawford is still in charge of that department. This is fun and catches them off guard and they typically reply sheepishly, "yes" to which I reply, "There is NO Bob Crawford, I made it up, have a nice day"