Jury Duty Scam Warning

Warning from a friend

Hey folks,

I do not normally do this. As a matter of fact, most of my FWD,,, are simply deleted without a second glance. WAY to many Emails to go through as is. But this was from a friend that has been around from ther beginning of the OPNTalk Blog and even before that, in various places around the Webb, so I checked it out. Here it is.

Pass this on to your grown children and family members. This has been verified by the FBI (their link is also included below). 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 summonses 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 (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.

Check it out here: http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june06/jury_scams060206.htm
And here: http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp

Yep! It's true

If you are like me, you hate Jury Duty. Some of you have this image in your head that they will come and knock on your door, and haul you off to Jail, if you fail to comply. So this makes you an easy target for a scam like this.

It reall is simple. NEVER give out private information to anyone over the phone or Online, unless you are ONE HUNDRED PERCENT sure that you KNOW who it is you are dealing with. Be careful out there folks.
Peter