Jury Duty Scam

This has been verified by the FBI (their link is also included below).

This scam seems to be 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. The caller claims to work for the local court and then claims you failed to report for jury duty. The caller then tells you that a warrant has been issued for your arrest.

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