Consumer Alert
Fraud Alert Connected to Jury Duty Phone Call
Anchorage Police Department
Press Release
March 20, 2008
Contact: Lt. Paul Honeman
APD Public Information Officer
786-2403 Office
762-0738 Pager
Jury Duty Scam
This has been verified by the FBI (their link is also included below). 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.
Two Web Sites to verify this scam: