This has been verified on Snopes.com (link listed below) and 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 summons for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out
on their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of scam has surfaced.
Fall for it and your identity could be stolen, reports CBS. In
this con, someone calls pretending to be a court official who
threateningly says a warrant has been issued for your arrest because you
didn’t show up for jury duty. 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. Sometimes they even ask for credit card numbers. 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 in formation by pretending they’re with the court system. The
FBI and the federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their
web sites, warning consumers about the fraud.
I haven’t heard of this scam. I am glad it was mentioned. I used to think I could never fall for a hoax, but the more I hear about the more I think I could. All these numbers and this and that—it just seems so confusing.
I guess you don’t ever give any numbers out unless you have called a place yourself, so you know exactly who you are talking to. Would that be a good rule? Then I don’t have to think about what to do. If they call me, no information is given. If I call them, I can give information. Same with Internet, if I contact them then I can give information. If they contact me, like through email, I do not give information even if it seems okay. I must contact them through their website.
Any more, I simply tell people I do not do any business over the phone.
Legitimate organizations, offices, banks, and businesses seem to have no problem with this; in fact, most of them no longer contact people by phone anyway unless there is a prior business relationship.
If someone on the other side of the connection gets upset, flustered, pushy, or hard-sell when I tell them this, I simply say in a quiet voice, “I’m hanging up the phone now.” And then I do so.
A simple response is to tell them you need to get back to them with that information, and ask for a number you can call them back at. If they are really stupid enough to give you a number you can aid the police in an arrest. More likely they will come up with really weak excuses, at which you can laugh and hang up. Why would you not be rude to scum?
I work for our county gov’t, and know some of the clerk of court people (including THE Clerk of Courts) so I wouldn’t fall for this one…but, yeah, if I didn’t, I could see maybe falling for it. But I don’t give out info over the phone. Heck, I don’t answer the phone unless it’s someone I know. Half the time I don’t answer it then. If it’s really important, they will leave a message.
I’ve been on jury duty only once, and it was many years ago. I’m pretty certain I wasn’t notified for it over the phone. That would fly in the face of bureaucracy as we know it, anyway, if you think about it: there must always be a trail of records. Phone ain’t gonna cut it; can’t possibly be legit for that sort of thing. And I’m darned sure the local government organs don’t have my email addy.
I don’t waste too much time with phone annoyances any more. A simple, “Ummnothanksgoodbye”, followed immediately by a no-mercy return of the receiver to its cradle, works for me. One time when I did let myself be drawn in, things got to the level of, “Look. If you want my money so much but can’t be bothered to kill a tree for me to get it, then I’m definitely not interested in what your company has to say. Goodbye.”
I would have been better off with the first approach. Less waste of air and time. But then, I’m not one of those who enjoys toying with those people. My sister-in-law, though: she’s pulled off some pretty hilarious stuff with unwanted callers. But then, she was a theater major.
I use caller name and number id to tell me who is calling. If either piece of information is hidden then I don’t answer. But it bothers me to have the phone ringing away, so I usually pick it up and drop it immediately. After the second attempt, most automatic dialler systems give up and remove your number from their lists.
As Tony points out, this means that most cell phone users can’t get through to me. But I have learned that you can easily arrange through your cell phone service provider to have some sort of label go through on your calls, even if its just the name of the cell phone provider.
