Saturday, September 22, 2007

Jury Duty Scam Alert

Most of us take summons for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of scam has surfaced. I received this alert from through my email from the Retired Houston Police Officer’s Association.

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 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 to bully people into giving information by pretending they're with the court system.

NEVER give personal information over the telephone

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